■STMVING AMERICA 



BY ALFRED W. MX. ANN 



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STARVING AMERICA 



ALFRED W. McGANN 




THIS PICTURE OF THE AUTHORS YOUNGEST CHILD, WHO HAS 
NEVER BEEN SICK, IS INCLUDED BY REQUEST OF THE PUBLISHER 
AS THE BEST EVIDENCE OF THE SOUNDNESS OF THE VIEWS ON 
FEEDING CHILDREN AS SET FORTH IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES. 



STARVING 
AMERICA 



BY 

ALFRED W. McCANN 

MEMBER OF VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. 

THE ASSOCIATED ADVERTISING 

CLUBS OF AMERICA 



Copyright, 1913 
By F. M. BARTON 



F. M. BARTON 

CLEVELAND NEW YORK 



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©CLA33228e 



PREFACE, 

During his seventeenth and eighteenth years, the 
writer suffered a severe illness which resisted treat- 
ment for eighteen months. This experience re- 
sulted in a keen interest in the subject of food. 
After his recovery, brought abort finally by dietetic 
treatment, he was thrown into daily association for 
two years with Professor James R. Campbell, then 
an instructor in chemistry at Pittsburg College, 
His room in the college adjoined Professor Camp- 
bell's room, and they spent much time together in 
the discussion of chemical theories, and their ex- 
perimental proofs. He conceived a profound vener- 
ation for the mysteries of organic life, and began 
to look upon food as the embodiment of all the 
forces, which, when properly co-related and re- 
leased, are responsible for the continuation of life. 

As an amateur, he began to study biochemistry, 
and the chemistry of foods, but could find nothing 
authoritative on the subject. Dietitians were divid- 
ing food into four groups: Carbohydrates, proteins, 
fats and ''ash." The division of ''ash'* was always 
exasperatingly ignored, and apparently had little if 
any meaning for the dietitian, and was not consid- 
ered by him as significant or important. 

In the meantime, the writer learned, that a diet 
of pure carbohydrates, pure proteins and pure fat, 
would not support life, and the subject of "ash" 
grew more formidable and more fascinating. Phy- 
sicians and chemists everywhere, admitted that 
personally they knew nothing about "ash" in rela- 
lationship to food, and did not know where to go to 
get such information. Years of wrestling with the 
word "ash" resulted in little that could be depended 
upon until an experiment during a very critical 
period, in the writer's life began to throw a feeble 
light upon the subject. 

During this period, he was earning his livelihood 
as an advertising man, though the study of biochem- 
istry has been of absorbing interest to him at all 
times. 



Then it happened that he was appointed adver- 
tising manager of a large department store, which 
operated a grocery department, and a new avenue 
of a peculiar kind of information was thus opened 
up to him. 

During the two years of his service in this 
capacity, he acquired fragmentary knowledge of 
conditions which the outside world did not suspect. 

Then another and almost bottomless fountain of 
information concerning modern food conditions was 
tapped. He became the advertising man of a large 
food industry, and for five years his constant daily 
associates were food inspectors, chemists connected 
with the national and state departments, food man- 
ufacturers, importers, jobbers and commission men. 

For three years of this five-year period, he was 
employed under the roof of a modern food factory, 
and spent a great deal of his time in the laboratory 
of that factory. 

All the while, light was breaking upon the sub- 
ject of "ash," and the facts revealed in this book 
were applied to the diet of his children, luith results 
that confound nearly all accepted notions of feeding 
children. 

During this time. Dr. Wiley was leading a great 
food-reform movement. The writer began working 
2vith him and for him, and by virtue of his position 
was able to encourage and promote many food re- 
forms in a purely commercial way. His motives 
were continually assailed, because of his commercial 
affiliations, and it ivas even said by enemies of food- 
reform, that he had an ax to grind, and was making 
money out of his position. 

The ivriter had always a strong belief that the 
food-reform movement would work out its own 
destiny, and, in his position as advertising manager, 
sought by every means at his disposal, to put this 
belief into action, but, with a specialized knowledge 
of modern food conditions acquired by years of 
service on the inside behind the screens, and with 
a clear understanding of the limitations of the mod- 
ern food industry, he no longer expects a great iood- 



reform to come through advertising as now con- 
ducted. 

The advertising manager cannot state the whole 
truth in a food advertising campaign, for the reason 
that those who pay the advertising hills rightly in- 
sist that their advertisements shall center about the 
talking points that will sell their product, always 
keeping clear of trespass upon ethical ground. 

The food manufacturer fears to step outside the 
limits of a careful conservative campaign, because 
he feels that a radical departure from trade cus- 
toms would jeopardize his business. As a com- 
mercial institution, he declares that his chief 
function is not to educate the masses, and points to 
the fact that no profit is to be derived from such 
policy. 

Because of these obstacles in the way of reform, 
the writer no longer looks to commercial publicity, 
or to legislation as means through which to enlight- 
en the people. Most of the conditions described 
here are unknown to our legislative bodies, and it 
will be a long time before Congress can be educated 
to that point, tvhere the distressful facts here out-^ 
lined ivill be noted and acted upon. 

The reform work must be done in the schools. 

Our children must he taught the meaning of de- 
praved foods. They must learn hoiu those foods ar^ 
processed, bleached, colored, de-natured, de-germin- 
ated, de-mineralized, chemically treated. They must 
be taught the relationship of such food to sickness 
and death. They must he taught the relationship 
of natural food to health and life. The true condi- 
tions, now concealed from the public, must be ex- 
posed, in order that the public may make its own 
choice, guarded by a complete knowledge of factSi 
These facts are presented here in a manner under-- 
standable to the layman for the first time, and with 
the addition of the Catechism of Vital Questions and 
Answers, this work places before the people a full 
and complete exposure of the evil conditions, whicK 
unmolested, noiv menace the health and life of 
America, 






0ctob®r,19 
1912. 



My Bear MoCann: 

Your booK has staggered me. It is startling, 
appalling. Yooi do-^.not Icnow how mich it disturbs ma. 
Its force is- "terrific, its logic invincible. 

I do not Xnow of any other man who would dare 
wrestle with the problem as you have done. Who will have the 
courage to publish this boolc? 

Certainly from now on you will be lashed and 
Ridiculed and hated in ^any quarters and heavy pressure will 
fee applied to Xeep the truth in the darkness of controversy, 
but through it all your merciless analysis will stand naked 
to compel attention. 

Vast vipheaval will come out of your work and 
i Bhall not be greatly surprised to aee after its publication 
the spirit of a great and helpful revolution at our doors. 

When I told you that no book of a hundred years 
^ould ^qual the construct ivo force of yours, I meant it. 
I can c^onoclvo of nothing so trearaendousjso stirring, so over- 
VhediDlng as tho manner In which you have presented our greatest 
jQatlonai Benace aiad its reiaedy. 



Yoi 



^^.^.a.oM^ 



CONTENTS 



Chapter 

I The birthday party 11 

II Fifteen million defective children. . . 23 

III Dust thou art — New light on an old 

truth 27 

IV What the minerals do 31 * 

V Ferments 43 ^ 

VI Minerals lost or changed 49 

VII White bread starvation 57 

VIII Polished rice 69 

IX Other nations alarmed 77 

X Proper food or medicine 85 ' 

XI Meat eating insufficient 99 - 

XII What we should eat—Real food 103- 

XIII Candy, ice cream and other foods .. . Ill 

XIV A raid on impure foods 129 

XV Food adulterations 137 

XVI Food preservatives 147 

XVII Bacteria in food 159 

XVIII Labels that mislead 165 

XIX The "Poison Squad" 169 

XX Keeping foods 173 

XXI The procession of little white caskets 177 

XXII What to feed the child 183 

XXIII Increasing death rate 193 

XXIV Food experiments in schools 197 

XXV The hungry soil 201 

XXVI Food reforms in the grocery store. . . 207 

XXVII An ideal restaurant 217 

XXVIII Starting a bakery 233 

XXIX For physicians only 241 



CHAPTER I. 

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. 

There was something cruel in the shrill live o'clock 
whistle, that released the flour-mill workers from 
their toil, but no man heard its tragic note. It 
meant only that the day's labor was finished, and the 
workers were glad. Had there been a prophet on 
the street corner, to interpret the meaning of that 
screaming steam for them, as they came down the 
factory steps, they would have laughed and gone 
their various ways, some into convenient saloons, 
others hurriedly to their homes. 

One man, tall, pale, neatly dressed, clerk of the 
factory office, stopped a moment as the men broke 
line, and said to himself: "How many of these 
poor fellows are blessed at home with a little Helen 
like mine?'* The very thought of the child seemed 
to soften the hard lines of his serious face, and un- 
consciously he smiled. 

"I guess they all have their little birthday parties, 
too," he said to himself, and with a quick step, he 
set out for the nearest candy shop. 

He had left the office promptly, and other whistles 
were blowing, but their shrill screams had no mes- 
sage for his light heart. 

For a whole week, little Helen had reminded him 
almost every day not to forget to bring candles for 
the great birthday cake, about which there had been 
so much planning at home, and he had remembered 
them a dozen times that day. 



12 STARVING AMERICA 

Seven different kinds of candy, of seven different 
colors to catch the children's eyes, and seven pretty 
candles were purchased, and snugly tucked into the 
deep pockets of his overcoat. 

"Life is indeed worth living," he murmured 
buoyantly, as he turned off the main thoroughfare 
into the street that led to his door. 

The weather was raw and chilly, so mother did 
not allow the little girl to run as usual to meet her 
father. She caught cold easily, and each cold seemed 
more difficult to cure than the one before. So her 
face was pressed against the window, as she waited 
eagerly for her father's coming. 

As he approached the door, he saw beside the 
last of the year's geraniums on the sill within, the 
darling face of his little one against the pane. For 
the first time in seven years, a convulsive shudder 
passed over him, as he caught sight of those white 
little cheeks, but it was as meaningless to him in 
that moment, as the shrill factory whistle to the 
men whom he had left a half hour before. 

Helen was in his arms. He lifted her high, and 
holding her aloft, he noted again the white cheeks 
of his angel, and looked into her laughing eyes 
stupidly. 

Something in the grim and sudden drooping of 
his mouth transmitted itself into the mother's heart, 
and she turned away from her husband's gaze, and 
looked over the housetops into the gathering dark- 
ness. No one may know the things she saw. 

**Did you bring my candles, pai)a?" cried the little 
one as she spied his bulging pockets. 

"Did I?" came the proud and laughing answer. 
"Well just look here," and the packages were opened. 

"See the purple one? that's for our little queen^ 
and the white one is for our little queen's heart, and 



THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 13 

the blue one is for her eyes, and the golden one is 
for her hair, and some day" — his voice dropped a 
little, "and some day, our little queen's lips will be 
like the red one, and her cheeks like the pink one. 
See, aren't they pretty, these birthday candles, with 
a color for every candle, and a candle for every year 
of our little darling's life, with this big green candle 
for the summer Sundays, when we will all go again 
with our luncheon to the green woods ?" 

The next day little Helen's playmates came, and 
the birthday party with its great frosted cake, and 
its lighted candles, and ice cream bricks, red, and 
white, and green, and brown, and the fancy candy of 
seven different hues made a riot of color for all. 
The children were transported with the rainbow 
goodies before them. Such chatter, and clatter, and 
laughter and song with little Helen crowned in a 
whole afternoon of childhood's glory, could not be 
crowded within four home walla. Some of its full- 
ness must flow over into the busy streets, and be 
heard far off, even in the heart of a father busy at 
his work three miles away. 

All the afternopn he heard, he saw, he knew, and 
when that shrill whistle sounded again, he had for- 
gotten the strange pain of the night before, and 
was off, for at least an hour of the party was to 
be reserved for his arrival. 

They were happy "good-night" wishes that ended 
that happy day, and when little Helen's mother 
tucked her away in her warm little bed, she, too, was 
happy. 

The next day Helen did not feel well, and did 
not go to school. She had a little fever, which her 
mother called an "upset." The fever continued an- 
other day, and they called a doctor. He felt her 



14 STARVING AMERICA 

pulse, looked at her tongue, and asked what she 
had been eating. 

When told about the birthday party, he smiled, 
and said she had probably eaten too much. He gave 
her some medicine, and in a few days she apparently 
was well again. 

The doctor did not know, that the milk of which 
that ice cream had been made was "loose milk." He 
did not know that a microscopical examination of it 
would have revealed 90,000,000 organisms to the 
cubic centimeter, which is much less than a teaspoon- 
f ul. He did not know that many of those organisms 
were of a pathogenic character. He did not know 
that the ice cream was stiffened with a "bodifier" 
made of commercial gelatin, which the Bureau of 
Chemistry at Washington, has shown to contain as 
many as 6,000,000,000 organisms to the gram, of 
which there are twenty-nine in a single ounce. He 
did not know that among those organisms were some 
of the most deadly forms of bacterial life. 

He did not know that those colored candies were 
made chiefly of glucose, sweetened with about 10% 
of sugar. He did not know the action of glucose, 
and "refined" sugars when excessively consumed. He 
did not, know that on a glucose diet, bees and white 
mice are quickly killed, although it has been gener- 
ally supposed that glucose is a good food for the 
child. He did not know that the flavors of that 
ice cream and candy were derived from ethers, and 
were purely artificial. He did not know that their 
colors were "certified" coal tar dyes, and so he 
charged Helen's illness to "overeating," but he 
did not place much importance upon the food itself, 
which she had over-eaten. 

Let us sit down to-night at the dining table in 
one of our average homes, where there are children. 



THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 15 

and discuss this thing sensibly, frankly, fully. Let 
us learn why Helen caught cold so easily, and why 
it was difficult to cure those colds, and why she 
had periodical "upsets." 

Let us hear the real note in that shrill mill 
whistle, and let us seriously face the issue as parents, 
teachers, or physicians. We will discover what un- 
dermined the health of that little girl, and destroyed 
the happiness of that little family. 

Of what did their breakfast consist? Let us 
see. There was the usual coffee, and the usual rolls 
and toast, with one of the many popular breakfast 
foods, served with milk produced by cows fed on 
demineralized brewer's grain, and by-products of the 
cotton seed oil, and glucose industries. Is this not 
the breakfast of millions? you ask. Stop, for this 
is serious business that we are discussing. There 
must be no argument, until all of these cruel pages 
have surrendered all their cruel facts to all the 
flour-mill and food factory whistles of America, that 
their warning may be heard and understood. After 
that, the argument, but now the food of the child. 

Breakfast foods, corn, barley, wheat and rice 
must "keep." They must look "nice." The spirit of 
little Helen is asking, "By what processes are these 
two requirements fulfilled?" 

The pages that follow will answer, and if the 
answer cuts deep into hearts that have been pierced 
already, let the later wounds inspire atonement. We 
have gathered together for the sake of the child.' 

At noon, as the father did not come home, the 
mother fried the potatoes left from the last night's 
meal, and added a bit of bologna or cheese. Helen 
liked bread or biscuits with syrup for lunch. 
Helen's mother did not know what had been taken 
out of the bread and biscuits, and what had been 



16 STARVING AMERICA 

taken out of the com that produced the syrup. She 
liked strawberry jam, or some other fruit jam from 
the grocery store, with its 10% of fruit, and its 
10% of apple juice, made from the sulphured skins 
^nd cores of the dried apple industry, with its 70% 
of glucose, sweetened with 10% of sugar, and held 
together with enough inorganic phosphoric acid to 
supply the jellying quality, and preserved with "one- 
tenth" of one percent benzoate of soda, to prevent 
the mass from fermenting. 

Only "one-tenth of one percent" of this chemical 
is declared on the label. The presence of as much 
as four more tenths of benzoate of soda in many food 
products was determined by the Commissioner of 
Agriculture of the State of Georgia, through the 
report of the State Chemist, published as serial 
number 56, in September, 1912, in spite of the fact 
that only "one-tenth" was declared on the label of 
those products. Little Helen's doctor did not know 
this. 

Little Helen's father and mother were not taught 
the chemistry of food in the schools, nor the relation- 
ship which refined food would some day bear to their 
anemic child. 

But we must not go too fast. The evening meal 
was quite suited to the father's needs. It consisted 
of chops, or pot roast, or sausages, or baked beans 
and ham, with vegetables of the season, fresh, or 
vegetables of some other season, canned, and a home- 
made pie or pudding. It was the average American 
meal, and it is the average meal with which we are 
concerned. 

During the afternoon, a confectionery store down 
the street received many of the pennies of the little 
girl. It had existence for the purpose of attracting 
those pennies. There are just twenty million of such 



THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 17 

pennies spent each day in the United States, by 
school children. Helen "feasted" between meals on 
colored glucose at the candy store. 

She had been always of a delicate type, anemic 
and nervous. At different times she had been 
treated by the family physician for tonsilitis, acute 
chorea and anemia. At the age of six she under- 
went an operation for adenoids. In the United 
States at the same time, there were more than 200,- 
OOT) such operations among the children. She had 
taken a tonic of iron and manganese. 

Remember these words, "iron and manganese." 

At other times tonics of strychnia were pre- 
scribed, and on two occasions she was given by- 
chloride mercury, and chloride arsenic. 

Her teeth, like those of other millions of children 
were decayed. At times mother said, "I wonder if 
we feed Helen properly?" but Aunt Jennie always 
answered, "Her ills are natural to childhood, and to 
be expected. She will outgrow them." The neigh- 
bors told her that the less attention she paid to her 
child's food, the better, because people who were 
always worrying about food had the hardest luck. 
Here and there a plump child was pointed out to 
her, as a model of what eating "anything and 
everything" would produce. It was not known that 
the plump child's plumpness had nothing to do with 
muscle-tone ; nothing to do with normal functioning ; 
nothing to do with vitality or high resistance. It 
was not known that the plump child fed on "every- 
thing and anything," succumbed even more quickly 
than the thin child, but grandmothers and mothers 
had fed children for ages, and surely they must 
know a little about their business. So little Helen's 
mother felt that, as they said, the child would event- 
ually outgrow her illness. 



18 STARVING AMERICA 

A few weekg after the birthday party, as Helen 
was going home from school, she was caught in a 
rainstorm. Her mother changed her clothes as soon 
as she came home and gave her a hot lemonade. 
That night she had a high fever and again the doctor 
was called. 

When he came, he uttered one word, "pneu- 
monia." 

That father and mother in the year 1910, stricken 
into dumb and sudden darkness, in the tenderest and 
brightest hour of their sweetest hope, faced the same 
unutterable emptiness of life that a quarter of a 
million of other fathers and mothers in the same 
year faced. For in the United States, in the year 
1910, 235,262 little children under ten years of age, 
went into the great beyond, to give testimony to the 
darkness of earth. 

The apparent cause of Helen's death was pneu- 
monia. The real cause was mal-nutrition, low re- 
sistance, insidious starvation. 

If 235,262 children had lost their lives in an 
epidemic, or in a massacre, it would have aroused the 
nation, but if those 235,262 little children travel ob- 
scurely in one year into death, the nation neither 
heeds nor understands. 

When the Titanic went down with 1600 souls 
aboard, the cities of civilization put on an inky cloak 
of sorrow. The multitudes of many lands stood at 
the edge of the sea, calling through the night in 
their desperation, for the waters to bring their 
fellows home. Less than two thousand perished, but 
they perished in a heap. Man's power for them had 
come to an end. Beaten and humbled by the sense- 
less block, the earth was dazed, because the tragedy 
was strange and sudden. The slow moving, dead- 



THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 



19 



lier peril that walks with us in the day and sleeps by 
our side at night, arouses no man. 

Are we insensible to this fearful lo^s, because 
our children fall quietly like the petals of autumn 
roses ? Have we grown careless to this fearful loss, 
because it goes on day by day, increasing each year? 
Do we not care to take the trouble to learn its 
cause? 

A Bulletin prepared in 1912 by the United States 
Bureau of Education states that: 

400,000 children have organic disease 
1,000,000 children have tuberculosis in some form 
1,000,000 children have spinal curvature 
1,000,000 children have defective hearing 
4,000,000 children are suffering from malnutri- 
tion 
6,000,000 children have enlarged tonsils, adenoids 

or other gland diseases 
10,000,000 children have defective teeth 
15,000,000 children need attention for physical de- 
fects which are prejudicial to health. 
On January 24th, 1912, the census director at 
Washington issued mortality statistics for 1910, re- 
vealing for that year, 805,412 deaths in the United 
States. Roughly tabulated some of these are — 

Infants under one year of age 154,375 

62,946 
17,943 



Children from two to five years of age 
Children from six to ten years of age . . 



Total deaths of children under ten 235,262 

Youths from ten to 19 years of age 31,508 

Deaths between 20 and 29 years of age. . . . 62,957 

Deaths between 30 and 39 years of age 68,957 

Deaths between 40 and 49 years of age. . . . 72,935 

The appalling sacrifice of infants indicates that 

nearly 200,000 American women entered into the 



20 STARVING AMERICA 

shadows of motherhood unfit to bring their children 
into the world, or having brought them into the 
world, were unfit to care for them. With such a 
background as this, our proud parade of Paris 
fashions in softly folded tissues, delicate silks, and 
wools, ravishing creations, takes on the leer of re- 
fined debauch. 

Two hundred and thirty-five thousand two hun- 
dred and sixty-two little children in the rear of that 
parade were denied the right to enter their "teens" 
and many thousands of young men and women facing 
life with all its possibilities went wearily into the 
great beyond while the heart of womanhood was 
brooding over the captivating styles of dress. 

A study of these brutal facts should not alarm 
us. It should inspire hope. By ignoring the truth 
or by refusing to look into it because of the grim 
depression which accompanies the contemplation of 
such a holocaust, we betray our unfitness to deserve 
a better fate. 

By facing the situation bravely and by determin- 
ing to find out the cause of America's Slaughter of 
the Innocents we prove that in some measure at 
least we are worthy to account for our stewardship 
of the lives that have been put into our keeping. 

If in the year 1912 a hostile army should visit 
our shores and put to death a quarter of a million 
of our young people, there would be weeping and 
v/ailing and gnashing of teeth. We would cry to 
heaven for vengeance and in letters of blood the 
world would record upon the history of the 20th 
century a crime unparalleled in all the ages of man. 

That hostile army has visited our shores and is 
now ruthlessly destroying our children. 

It is the army of ignorance, indifference, com- 
placency, selfishness and passion. The crowds in 



THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 21 

the market place, in the cars, on the street, in the 
theatre give no thought to the waste of life going on 
around them. They do not see it. 

*'With desolation is the earth made desolate be- 
cause no man thinketh in his heart." 

If most of these deaths are preventable and if by 
teaching the fundamental principles of life to our 
children at school, to our young men and v^omen, to 
our young fathers and mothers, we can make this 
dreadful thing impossible, then, indeed, the remedy 
concerns us all and our failure to heed the facts, 
as they stand, puts on the shirt of murder. 

Of the total number of deaths, tuberculosis was 
responsible for more than 80,000. These figures rep- 
resent the number of those who perished of the 
disease in that year, not the number of those who 
were afflicted with it and incapacitated by it. 

Sixty-four thousand died of diarrhoea and this 
number indicates in no manner the number who dur- 
ing the year were stricken with diarrhoea and re- 
covered. It does indicate the prevalence of grave 
errors of diet. 

Between the ages of ten and nineteen years, 
tuberculosis caused 24.5 per cent of the total deaths. 
Between the years of twenty and twenty-nine tuber- 
culosis caused 35 per cent of the total deaths and 
between the years of thirty and thirty-nine tubercu- 
losis caused 28.5 per cent of the total deaths. 

Cancer, kidney disease and appendicitis stalk 
along in menacing dignity as important attendants 
of the great executioner. 

The National Association for the Study and Pre- 
vention of Tuberculosis informs us that in the year 
1911, $14,500,000 were spent throughout the coun- 
try in the war against tuberculosis. About the 
same amount was spent in the year 1910. Of the 



22 STARVING AMERICA 

total sum spent last year, $11,800,000 were spent in 
the treatment of consumptives in sanitariums and 
hospitals ; the remainder was spent by anti-tubercu- 
losis associations, open-air schools, dispensaries and 
Boards of Health. New York, Pennsylvania and 
Massachusetts in 1911 spent nearly $7,000,000 in 
fighting this disease and in the early part of 1912 
State Legislatures and other public bodies appropri- 
ated over $10,000,000 to continue the work. 

The mission of these relentless figures is to 
awaken you and to arouse in you an interest in the 
national health. They show that a little army of 
noble men and women is fighting out there in the 
field of sorrow with such poor weapons as they have. 
This book will throw the light on another weapon. 



CHAPTER II. 
FIFTEEN MILLION DEFECTIVE CHILDREN. 

Two hundred and thirty-five thousand children 
died in the homes of our nation in one year. But 
how about the living? When the Reaper, Death, had 
such a harvest, were not his attendants, Disease 
and Pain, following in his train? 

The evils that brought about the death of more 
than a quarter of a million delicate children in the 
United States during a year — what was their effect 
on children with a little more vigor and vitality? 
What is the actual condition of the school children 
of the present day? 

All over America and Europe public school chil- 
dren are being examined by physicians in their 
search for disease. 

Half tne children in a school in the slums of 
Leeds were found by Dr. Hall to be suffering from 
rickets, a result of lime and phosphorus starvation. 
How came that so? We shall see. 

In the Edinburgh school, 40% of the children 
were found to be suffering with diseases of the 
ear, a result of general systemic disorder, brought 
about by insufficient food of the right kind or an 
abundance of food lacking in nutritive value. 

Of 10,500 school children the British Dental As- 
sociation found 86% suffering from defective teeth, 
the result of a diet lacking in the mineral elements 
upon which the bones and teeth depend for their 
existence. 



24 STARVING AMERICA 

In the Dundee schools 50% of the children were 
found to be suffering from defective vision. 

In Alameda, California, the Superintendent of 
Schools says that out of 3600 pupils, more than 300 
are afflicted with physical defects, observable even to 
the layman. 

Mayor Fitzgerald of Boston in the month of 
December, 1911, announced the results of the first 
three months' work conducted by Dr. William J. 
Gallivan, Chief of the Division of Child Hygiene of 
the Boston Board of Health. 

The school physicians under Dr. Gallivan ex- 
amined 42,750 children and only 14,957, a little more 
than one-third, were found to be in a condition that 
could be called healthy; 27,795 of the children ex- 
amined were described as defective. 

In this historic center of the learning and culture 
of the United States, an investigation covering three 
months discovered among the children of the schools 
19,518 cases of defective teeth, 9,738 cases of dis- 
eased tonsils, 3,509 cases of skin disease, 575 cases 
of rickets and 1,611 cases of malnutrition. 

The Bureau of Medical Research reports that "in 
rural as well as in city schools, nearly one in three 
have trouble with the eyes, nearly one in five are 
mouth breathers, because of abnormal growths in 
the air passages, besides many who are obviously 
predisposed to tuberculosis and nervous trouble." 

All these infirmities lower efficiency and for 
this reason Public School Boards are ordering opera- 
tions upon some children's throats for adenoids, are 
correcting defective vision for others, doing dental 
work, providing nurses, furnishing meals at cost 
price. A few of them are sending cards of instruc- 
tion on hygiene and diet to parents. 



DEFECTIVE CHILDREN 25 

The charge for all these services is borne by 
the community. If the work were not done under 
school directions it apparently would not be done 
at all. The state in these instances exercises vast 
and elastic powers in the regulation of public 
health and education. 

The great question is : Why does not the State 
make an attempt to get at the real cause of diseases 
and instruct the people how to remove the cause? 

Our purpose is to set down in plain words here a 
number of common but deadly sins of diet, the 
ignorance or disregard of which can end only in 
disease. Our object is to put in plain form the prin- 
ciples of life so that they may be understood and 
heeded by parent and child. 

He who would enter a race or struggle in a game 
of the field must know the rules of the game or suffer 
defeat. In the study of health and disease the laws 
of nature are the rules of the game. They are simple 
laws and easily obeyed, but when we ignore them, 
the price we pay is death. Few of us give them at- 
tention for the reason that we do not know them 
and make no effort to know them until it is often 
too late. 

"A man is a fool or a physician at forty." 

The object of the following pages is to make 
the boy a physician at ten by making his parents a 
physician when he is born. The period from his 
infancy to his "teens" will thus be safeguarded and 
after that he can face the future with no cry against 
those who brought him into the world: ''Why did 
you handicap me through your ignorance from the 
beginning?" 

Every household wherein ordinary intelligence 
abides can co-operate with those forces that are 
striving to educate the nation to a sense of its duty. 



26 STARVING AMERICA 

If it can be said that the home is the cradle of 
the nation, it can be said more truthfully that the 
pantry is the cradle of the home. 

Much will be revealed to you here concerning our 
crimes against our wheat, corn, rice and barley, 
against our biscuits, crackers and bread, against 
our canned vegetables and fruits, against our mo- 
lasses, condiments and sweets, against most of the 
things we eat, but we shall not destroy without 
building up. If you would know the truth, told here 
in all its shocking entirety and help in the work 
of atonement read patiently the following pages. 

The few chapters which are devoted to a descrip- 
tion of the building of a human body out of its 
food are necessary. Their careful reading will pre- 
pare you for a complete grasp of all that follows in- 
cluding the chapter on how to feed the child. That 
chapter does not follow immediately because it is in 
reality the summing up and interpretation of the 
hundred food truths that must be understood thor- 
oughly before intelligent provision for the child's 
food-needs is possible. 



CHAPTER III. 

DUST THOU ART — NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD TRUTH. 

Man has not probed into the real meaning of the 
words, "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt re- 
turn." Our knowledge of the first law of life has 
been lost. Perhaps looking closely we may find a 
subtler meaning than the, one ordinarily given to the 
saying of Jehovah God to Adam. We may find that 
it is a law of life, not of death as we have thought. 

Let us look at the soil from which we have 
sprung. If we take a handful of fertile earth into 
the laboratory and split it up, we find that it is 
composed chiefly of sixteen elements. When we 
analyze the body of a man, we find that it, too, is 
made up principally of the same sixteen elements. 
If we take next a handful of wheat, lo! again the 
very same sixteen elements. This is the clue to the 
riddle of life. 

There never was a human body that did not 
contain these sixteen substances. Evidently these 
substances are present as the result of no accident. 
They are: oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, 
chlorine, fluorine, iron, phosphorus, calcium, potas- 
sium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, sulphur, 
silica, iodine. The body gets these elements from 
its food. 

These sixteen elements, found in the earth, and 
in wheat, and in man's own body, have formidable 
names, but as we eat them every time we eat a grain 
of whole wheat and are not disturbed unduly over 



28 STARVING AMERICA 

their presence at the dinner table, we do not believe 
we will have much difficulty in studying them to 
find out just what they do for us, and how our in- 
terference with them results in disease and death. 

Soil that will produce vegetation must contain 
oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, chlorine, 
fluorine, iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, 
magnesium, manganese, sodium, silica, sulphur and 
iodine. 

These special elements produce crops and with- 
out them crops cannot be produced. 

Without phosphorus all the other, elements are 
worthless even though they be present abundantly. 
The science that treats of the life and health of the 
soil is so conscious of this fact that in order that we 
may have a supply of phosphorus to put back into 
the soil, to replace our annual drain upon it, the 
United States government prohibits the exportation 
of our limited supply of phosphate rock. 

We get nitrogen and potassium and the other 
elements from many available sources but the 
amount of phosphorus in the mines and in the land 
is so easily estimated and so very limited and so 
positively essential, because there is no known sub- 
stitute for it, we have had to resort to law in order 
to save our soil from exhaustion. 

The* upper crust of the earth, known as soil, 
averages from six to twelve inches in depth. This 
thin film of earth containing the vitalizing mineral 
elements that give us all our vegetation is the cradle 
of the world. The first seven or eight inches of the 
virgin top soil of an acre of land weigh about two 
million pounds. In this top soil there are only about 
two thousand pounds of phosphorus. Thus we see 
what a wonderful function it performs in combining 
with the other elements that support life. One 



NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD TRUTH 29 

little part of phosphorus in a thousand parts of 
earth! Think of it! Nature's most profound laws 
are qualitative, not quantitative. 

Phosphorus, in proper combination with all the 
other fertilizing or life-giving elements of the soil 
together with scientific cultural methods, means 
normal crops, means health, buoyancy, and vigor in 
the animal life that feeds upon these crops. 

The absence of phosphorus in proper proportion 
means soil starvation and inevitable loss of vitality. 

Science recognizes that this subtle substance, 
which it has taken hundreds of years to create, 
must not be removed from the soil if we do not 
wish the end to come. All the gold and silver and 
precious stones of the mines, all the piteous cries 
of starving multitudes cannot recreate this mys- 
terious compounder of life. So science warns us 
against our prodigality and tells us that if we want- 
only destroy it or remove it from the earth or from 
our food we must pay the price in death. 

The laws that must be enacted to conserve the 
fertility of the earth will make it a crime to destroy 
the straw-stacks and rough forage that should be 
used to bed the stables and pens where stock is^ fed 
so that it can be burned and returned to the soil in 
the form of ash to add its mineral fertility to the 
exhausted land. In the milling districts of the west 
the straw-stacks are often burned and as their 
smoke rises heavenward it obscures the light of the 
sun, symbolizing the darkness under which a waste- 
ful and prodigal people wantonly destroy the ele- 
ments that give them their life's blood. The life- 
giving ash is not conserved. 

However, phosphorus is only one of the mineral 
elements, without which life on the surface of the 
world would become extinct. But, because the avail- 



39 STARVING AMERICA 

able supply of phosphorus is so small, it possesses 
picturesque importance as an illustration of the ne- 
cessity of minerals not only in the land, in the 
vegetable and fruit and grain which the land yields, 
but also in the life-processes of man and animal. 

Iron, potassium, calcium, sulphur, silica, chlorine 
and the other elements are as important as phos- 
phorus, and when we remove any one of them from 
the earth, we produce soil-sickness and the fruits of 
the soil are dwarfed or do not appear at all. 

"Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return" 
is a profound utterance containing a great lesson 
which the twentieth century must learn. 



CHAPTER IV. 
WHAT THE DUST, OR MINERALS, DO. 

We have said that a handful of fertile earthy a 
handful of wheat, and the body of man, each con- 
tains about sixteen elements. Our purpose will be 
to show the relationship of these elements to life. 

Like the blood, the gastric juice, the pancreatic 
juice, the saliva, the bile and other vital fluids of 
the body are composed of mineral salts in solution. 

It is evident that the mineral salts in the fluids 
of the body are not there through accident. 

Water forms about three-fourths of the adult 
body and is the medium in which the chemical 
changes of the body are carried on. 

We could transfer an iron tank filled with pure 
sulphuric acid from San Francisco to New York 
and back again and the acid would not effect the 
tank in any manner. If we introduced water into 
that tank the acid would immediately become very 
active and destroy the tank. Thus you see that even 
water is a wonderful medium through which to 
convey the forces of nature. 

We can believe, therefore, that the body of a 
man weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, made up 
of more than a hundred pounds of water, contains 
all that water as the result of no accident. 

Of the solid matter to be found in the human 
body about one-fifth is made up of the minerals — - 
iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, 
sodium, sulphur, etc. Chlorides and phosphates 



32 STARVING AMERICA 

with carbonates and sulphates form the chief of 
these mineral salts. What do they do for us? 

If we put a trace of blood under the microscope 
we discover a wonderful sight. Hundreds of little 
corpuscles are seen swimming about. Most of them 
are red, but a considerable number are white. Each 
has its own work to do. 

A single drop of blood contains many millions of 
corpuscles, far more than all the visible stars in the 
sky. These corpuscles are not the only things found 
in the blood. In addition to them we find many 
mineral salts such as iron, calcium, phosphorus, 
sodium, potassium, magnesium, sulphur, chlorine, 
etc. These substances are always found when pure 
and normal blood is examined, so it is evident that 
they must get into the blood through some definite 
channel and in obedience to some well defined law. 
The red and white corpuscles have certain well de- 
fined work to do. It is also evident that anything 
which interferes with their work or that keeps them 
out of the blood is an enemy of life. 

To make that blood nature obtains her building 
materials from food. All food contains some of these 
building materials. Some food contains all of them, 
except in such instances where man ignorantly re- 
moves them. If by accident, we should for a few 
months consume food deficient in some of these 
building materials we would quickly feel the effects 
in our general health. It is easy to understand that 
if we are partial to a particular kind of food from 
which a considerable proportion of nature's building 
materials have been extracted, we are going to 
develop disorder. 

When the laws under which nature operates are 
suspended, nature simply does not operate. Man 
might as well expect a jeweler to make a watch 



WHAT THE MINERALS DO 33 

without the materials from which the wheels and 
springs and screws and bearings are made as to 
expect nature to make a drop of normal blood with- 
out the elements that enter into the composition of 
blood. 

Nature will set up a warning for us before fatal 
damage has been done, but if we do not understand 
the warning and do not heed it, we head straight for 
destruction, unless, in the meantime, some accidental 
change of diet provides the body with the elements 
it needs in order to maintain its balance. 

Our food is the most important thing in life be- 
cause upon it all other things depend. We digest 
and assimilate that food in obedience to a fixed law. 
If we keep well without knowing that law we are 
fortunate. It is evident that we should make an 
effort to locate that law, understand it and apply 
it. 

Each little drop of pure blood is an expression of 
that law. Anything that interferes with the purity 
and character of the blood is an enemy of life. Be- 
cause man leaves everything to chance and as a rule 
refuses to accept the idea that it is necessary to pay 
attention to his diet, he sends a call into the un- 
known darkness and demands hundreds of diseases 
to come forth from nothingness to assist him in 
managing the world. 

If we remove one element of the necessary six- 
teen from the food we introduce the beginning of 
disaster into the body. 

If two elements are removed the body may make 
use of the other fourteen for a time, but soon the 
unnatural condition under which nature is thus 
forced to operate will assert itself and disaster will 
follow. 



S4 STARVING AMERICA 

If three or four or five substances are removed 
from the building materials, the inevitable collapse 
will take place a little sooner. If seven or eight 
elements are removed destruction is speedy. When 
all sixteen substances are removed starvation begins 
at once. 

Thus we see that the matter of breakfast, dinner 
and supper, is not a matter to be left to accident or 
to an untrained kitchen drudge or to a food factory 
concerned chiefly in the profit-paying characteristics 
of its products. 

If we are pale or anaemic ; if our energy seems to 
be exhausted; if we feel little like undertaking the 
commonplace duties of the day ; if our children have 
lusterles^ eyes, pinched cheeks, underdeveloped 
limbs or abnormal tendencies, let us look to our 
food. If our children are bright, sturdy and resist 
disease by not falling victims to the ills which it is 
wrongfully assumed must come to all children, let 
us congratulate ourselves upon the lucky accident 
that has for a time brought to them a supply of the 
building materials necessary to their development. 

In congratulating ourselves let us understand 
the facts. 

An apple falls from the branch of an apple tree 
to the earth in obedience to a fixed law. A bullet 
leaves the mouth of a gun in obedience to a fixed law. 
Rain and snow fall from the clouds to the earth 
under fixed conditions and in obedience to fixed laws. 

If our children are well to-day as the result of 
the operation of a law concerning which we know 
nothing, it is necessary to learn something of that 
law in order that we may consider to-morrow. 

The child is well as the result of happy accident. 
Let us keep him well by understanding the law by 



WHAT THE MINERALS DO 35 

which he continues well. The sixteen elements are 
part of that law. 

The body gets these elements from its food and 
from no other source. 

These substances must be in the food in order 
that the body may take them from the food. 

We will now try to find out what these substances 
do and why they are necessary and how many of 
them are artificially removed from our most familiar 
foods without our knowledge, and through our 
study find the law that will keep us well. 

The sodium found so extensively in the blood is 
found to perform a remarkable function in the pro- 
cesses of digestion. Without sodium, digestion can- 
not be carried on. 

That is evidently part of the law because it 
always operates in the same way. 

Without sodium, we cannot live. 

Potassium gives life to the nervous system and 
assists the heart to beat by influencing the relaxibil- 
ity or resiliency of the muscles. The heart is a great 
pump and if it did not send the blood into the lungs 
the body could not obtain the oxygen necessary to 
its life. Potassium destroys the hardening influ- 
ences that menace muscle, joint and artery. It 
makes the tissues soft and pliable. 

Linen made from flax grown on granite soil rich 
in potassium is noted for its suppleness and softness, 
whereas linen produced from calcareous soils is 
hard, brittle and of little strength. 

When the body cannot get the quantity of potas- 
sium necessary to carry on its wonderfully complex 
duties, the heart ceases to serve its master, the body 
dies. 

Here is a little laboratory experiment, which 



36 STARVING AMERICA 

will assist us to grasp an idea of the work which the 
minerals perform in the human body. 

Eat a tablet of citrate of lithium. Take a clean 
platinum wire, hold it in a blue Bunsen flame. Note 
that it gives no coloration to the flame. Now pass 
the platinum wire along the skin of your forehead, 
or across your palm, return it to the flame, and note 
the beautiful yellow flame of sodium, showing this 
mineral in the elimination processes of the body. 

Now take a blue glass, and look through it on the 
platinum wire in the flame, and note the beautiful 
lilac flame of potassium, showing this mineral also 
at work in the elimination processes of the body. 

Potassium keeps the tissues flexible and active, 
and assists the sodium to carry off the carbonic 
gas, manufactured as one of the end-products of 
combustion in the furnaces of life. 

Now about one-half hour after eating the citrate 
of lithium tablet, again clean the platinum wire thor- 
oughly. Pass it over the forehead, or across the palm 
of the hand. Put the wire into the flame, and be- 
hold the vivid red flame of lithium. In one short 
half hour, the lithium taken through the mouth, has 
circulated through all the avenues, highways and 
byways of the human body, and has appeared in its 
marvelous journey on the surface of the skin. 

Through this little experiment we get an idea of 
the hidden forces at work in our bodies. As a rule 
we give no thought to these forces and so are rarely 
prompted to question the character of this or that 
food although these forces are derived from food 
alone. 

Those little soldiers that we have called cor- 
puscles are never out of the presence of iron. Con- 
taining no iron themselves, they nevertheless float 



WHAT THE MINERALS DO 37 

in a fluid which does contain iron and if the iron were 
not there, the little soldiers would die. 

Iron combines with oxygen no matter where we 
find it. 

The blade of a pocket knife is "rusty" or the 
hinge on a barn door is "rusty" or a rifle barrel is 
"rusty," and rust is simply a combination of iron 
and oxygen. 

This wonderful affinity of oxygen for iron is part 
of the law under whose operation oxygen gets into 
our bodies. Without the iron in the blood we could 
not get oxygen and in a few minutes we would be 
dead. 

If we choke a man or woman for two minutes, 
shutting off the oxygen, we are guilty of murder. 

Oxygen is so necessary to life that we perish the 
moment it is taken from us. If the blood contains 
only half of the iron necessary to bring into the 
body all the oxygen required, the body from its 
diminished oxygen supply will grow pale and sicken. 
Iron is absolutely necessary. It is part of the 
law. 

The waste matter which is accumulating in our 
tissues during every second of our existence would 
kill us in twenty-four hours if it were not rendered 
harmless and carried away. When only partially 
removed the result is dyspepsia, diabetes, rheuma- 
tism, etc. 

The iron in the blood uniting with the oxygen 
in the lungs carries its life-giving freight to the 
tissues where it oxydizes or burns up the waste sub- 
stances so dangerous to life. 

If the iron is not present in sufficient quantity 
to keep up with the demands of the body, a large 
quantity of oxygen that ought to be inside the body 



SS STARVING AMERICA 

doing its work will remain outside the body ready 
and willing to work but unable to get in. 

When fire with the aid of oxygen attacks a piece 
of wood it produces smoke and ashes. The oxygen- 
burned waste-products in the body have to be car- 
ried away just as the smoke of the fire has to be 
carried off through the chimney and the ashes raked 
off through the bars of the grate. 

The oxydizing processes going on in the tissues 
produce carbonic gas. This gas is taken up by the 
sodium and discharged through the lungs as carbon 
dioxide. 

The sodium besides having work of its own to 
do has to help the oxygen and the oxygen has to 
be helped by the iron. 

These substances work not singly and alone but 
in beautiful order and in perfect harmony with 
each other. 

Meat is not wholly a godsend to the man who 
eats much of it for the reason that it is deficient in 
the mineral salts which the body requires. In con- 
sequence, he who eats meat to excess is plagued with 
rheumatism, asthma and corpulency and is sent to 
the mineral springs in order that he may drink 
water containing calcium, magnesium and sodium 
sulphate. 

Calcium, assisted by phosphorus, magnesium, 
silica and fluorine, builds up our bones and teeth. 
Fluorine is found in the whites of our eyes. 

If we reduce the quantity of calcium needed by 
the body in constructing its bones and teeth, we do 
just what the house-maker does when he uses insuffi- 
cient material with which to build. 

The body makes a poor job of its work just as 
the house-builder makes a poor house. 



WHAT THE MINERALS DO 39 

Children have defective teeth because they are 
not supplied with sufficient calcium-phosphate and 
calcium carbonate or because when these substances 
are really present in their food, they eat other food 
that destroys them and removes them from the 
body. 

Fluorine is prescribed in numerous diseases of 
the eye as fluoride of calcium. Chickens get the 
fluorine required for the production of their eggs if 
they have a chance to pick up little specks of granite. 
When confined in a wooden hen house and fed on 
food containing no fluorine they easily develop 
chicken cholera and chicken diphtheria. The yolk 
of the egg requires fluorine. The enamel of the teeth 
requires fluorine. The bones of the spine require 
fluorine. The pupil of the eye requires fluorine. 

When the farmer's fertilizer contains no fluorine 
his cereals and vegetables suffer. The old curse of 
nitrate fertilizer compels our nation to support a 
standing army of dentists, but it has not yet inspired 
us with the knowledge that would prevent curvature 
of the spine among children. 

Silica is a mineral of the alkaline group and as 
such it possesses powerful antiseptic properties. It 
helps the body to defend itself against the invasion 
of disease-breeding bacteria. Silica also influences 
the nervous system to do its proper work in the body. 
Accompanied with sulphur, it has much to do with 
the development and health of the hair. 

Animals which are fed upon foods from which 
any of these substances are artifically removed, die. 

These minerals not only themselves engage in 
the construction processes going on constantly with- 
in our bodies, but they also exercise a controlling 
influence over the destructive influences that 
threaten us from within and without. 



40 STARVING AMERICA 

The smallest boy in the laboratory can be made 
to understand the wonderful oxydizing properties 
of sulphuric acid. When this acid is generated in 
the body, though small in quantity, if its generation 
be continued systematically, even for a short time, 
its results can end only in disaster. 

A few drops of it taken into the body from a 
bottle will produce death. 

If food, from which the minerals have been re- 
moved, is introduced into the body it results in the 
formation in the intestines of free sulphuric acid 
from the albumenoid sulphur. 

The sulphuric acid abstracts basic elements from 
the intestines and tissues, thereby impairing or 
destroying them. 

Meat, which is minced and immersed for a few 
hours in cold, distilled water, loses its phosphorus 
and potassium salts. It also loses its color. If 
cooked in this condition it will be found to be taste- 
less. If fed to dogs and cats these animals will eat 
a little, then refuse to take more and if fed on noth- 
ing else, they will actually die quicker than animals 
not fed at all. This can be accounted for not only 
by the generation of free sulphuric acid in the body 
of the animals, but also by another fact. 

The animals fed on the demineralized meat in 
addition to being deprived of substances that will 
sustain life are obliged to dissipate their reserve 
vitality at a rapid rate through the efforts of their 
organs to throw off the useless food imposed upon 
them, whereas the animal that is being starved out- 
right is not called upon to expend its strength faster 
than the simple laws of starvation demand. 

The first part of the law which we are endeavor- 
ing to establish is that these mineral substancea 



WHAT THE MINERALS DO 41 

are so important in our body that when deprived of 
them we suffer disease or death. 

It follows that we must see to it that our food 
contains them. 

There are some dietitians who declare that our 
food contains an excess of mineral salts. This is 
sometimes true, but it is ag it should be. There is 
much evidence to indicate that frequently the excess 
of salts may be carried out of the body in life's 
processes faster than they are taken in the food 
without any consequent evil results. 

Nature has provided a reserve store-house from 
which in emergencies the body may find the ele- 
ments it needs, but if our diet is of a kind that ex- 
hausts nature's store-house, we face the consequences 
that inevitably follow the violation of any of nature's 
laws. 

This fact must be remembered in the feeding of 
children because when the food of the infant is 
changed from a purely milk diet to a mixture diet 
great injury may result through a deficiency of 
lime salts. 

A purely flesh diet, for example, is poor in lime 
and many of the foods on which children are fed 
have half the lime removed from them before they 
are put upon the table. Elsewhere, baby's diet 
based on the importance of its mineral content will 
be carefully outlined, also the diet of baby's mother. 

Spring time is the season of high spirits in 
nature. Man alone in the spring complains of lassi- 
tude. All around him under the action of nature's 
unmolested law he witnesses the miracle of rising 
sap, the quickening strength that swells the bud, 
the impelling energy that forces the spear of grass 
to lift itself upward through the lately frozen clod. 
Man contrasts his weariness with the power and 



42 STARVING AMERICA 

mastery, the sparkle and glow, the warmth and surge 
and buoyancy of spring, yet just as the earth has 
the green grass in its depths so has he the freshness 
of nature in his heart. He is just as much a part of 
nature. Nature's laws grip him just as tightly in 
their grasp. He needs his "tonic," or thinks he 
does, because unlike nature he does not follow the 
laws of life but closes his eyes upon them and sets 
up standards of his own. Unhappily his standards 
are at war with heaven and so he pays his price in 
death. 

Little Helen would be in her mother's arms to- 
day, strong, bright, happy, if ! 

The mortality records compiled by the census 
director at Washington, D. C, for 1910, showing 
that during that year 235,262 children under ten 
years of age died in the United States, force us to 
realize that as a nation we have been busier build- 
ing tunnels, subways, railroads, skyscrapers, 
bridges, air-craft and Atlantic liners, and living in 
luxury than in developing healthy, normal bodies. 

The time has come when we must teach the child 
that if he wishes to live and grow strong and be 
useful, he must eat the foods God has made necessary 
for the growth of his body. 



CHAPTER V. 

FERMENTS. 

In the bodies of animals and plants these sixteen 
elements are built up into highly complex combina- 
tions and as they are being built up they are also 
being broken down. 

As the tissue is destroyed by daily wear and 
tear, it is transformed into simpler chemical com- 
pounds and passed out of the body. In order that 
the living body may replace its broken-down cells, 
it must find a constant new supply of the elements 
from which those cells are evolved. 

These elements as we find them in the soil can 
be called non-living matter. The chemical processes 
which transform this non-living matter into living ^ 
tissues are the same in plants and animals with this ^ 
one mark of distinction. 

Plants are capable of taking the non-living 
matter from the earth and compounding it into the 
wonderfully complex substances which form their 
structure. Animals do not possess this power. 
Animals are dependent for their existence upon food- 
stuffs prepared from the non-living matter of earth 
by the plants that have the power to prepare them. 
Plants obtain the energy which enables them to do 
this mysterious work from the sunlight and only 
in the presence of sunlight can they carry on the 
up-building processes which give them their tissues. 
Green grass will not grow in the dark. 



44 STARVING AMERICA 

We know that under the influence of sunlight, 
plants are capable of combining the carbonic gas 
and nitrogen of the air with water and the mineraj 
salts of the soil into such substances as starchy fat 
and albumen. Their ability to bring about these 
changes depends upon the presence of a chemical 
substance which is found in their green parts and 
which is called chlorophyl. 

We know that chlorophyl requires exposure to 
the sun's rays in order to perform its mysterious 
work, but of the processes by which it does that 
work we know little. We know that various parts 
of the plant and various organs of the body contain 
substances that can be extracted. These substances 
are called enzymes or ferments, such as pepsin, 
trypsin, ptyalin. 

These ferments are found in the grains, also in 
the saliva and digestive juices of the body. 

We know that in the human body they serve the 
purpose of assisting to transform the various food- 
stuffs which are furnished to the animal by the plant 
into substances that can be absorbed and built up 
into animal tissue. 

Ordinary baker's yeast is a ferment having the 
power to transform starch and sugar into alcohol 
evolving at the same time a waste product in the 
form of gas. So there is nothing difficult in the 
consideration of ferments except to keep them alive. 
That we kill them in our food with "harmless" pre- 
servatives or remove them by mechanical mean§ will 
be shown as we proceed. 

It was thought at one time that the ferments 
found in the digestive glands were the only ferments 
to be found in the animal body. Accordingly our 
knowledge of their conduct in the processes of di- 



FERMENTS 45 

gestion was limited. It has been determined in 
recent years that ferments are of many kinds and 
they are present in every cell and are intimately 
concerned in all the manifestations of life. 

As many as a dozen different ferments have been 
found for example, in the liver-cell. It has also 
been demonstrated that for the maintenance of life 
in the case of the higher plants, the organized fer- 
ments are of profound importance. 

Through them the higher plants obtain their 
nitrogen in a form which they can subsequently 
utilize. So even in the presence of all the necessary 
minerals or mineral salts if these ferments be absent 
or dstroyed or enfeebled vegetable or animal life 
cannot exist. 

In the animal body some of these ferments such 
as pepsin, can act .to advantage only under an acid 
condition; while others, such as ptyalin, require an 
alkaline condition; still others can act under acid, 
alkaline or neutral conditions. Fixed laws control 
them. Certain ferments will act only upon certain 
definite substances and under the proper conditions. 
We trifle with those conditions at our peril. In its 
proper place, later on, the geranium of little Helen 
will tell us much. 

Fat-splitting ferments, for instance, will act only 
upon fats, diastase ferments will act only upon 
starch and sugar, proteolytic ferments will act only 
upon albumens. 

Of their chemical composition little is known that 
is definite. We do know that food of the wrong 
kind, food badly prepared, food which has suffered 
an unnatural loss of some of its elements can set up 
conditions^that are hostile to the action of these 
ferments, and that in setting up these conditions, we 



46 STARVING AMERICA ' 

are inviting physiological discord, which means 
disease. 

It is imperative that we do not interfere with 
the normal conditions that control the conduct of 
these ferments. All this will be explained so simply 
that we will doubtless wonder why we ever tolerated 
the food conditions that are here described. 

We know that human gastric juice is acid in 
action, the results of the presence of free hydro- 
chloric acid, that it contains sodium chloride, cal- 
cium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium 
phosphate and iron and depends on these elements 
for its existence. We know if we remove any of 
these elements or change any of them or prevent the 
body from finding any of them, by removing them 
from our food, we establish unnatural conditions 
in the gastric juice and immediately bring about 
disorder. 

We know that the pancreatic juice is alkaline in 
action and contains sodium chloride, potassium 
chloride, phosphate of magnesium, and lime. From 
this we learn that one part of the digestion is car- 
ried on in an acid medium while another part of it 
is carried on in an alkaline medium and our con- 
ception of the intricacies of the human laboratory 
increases in admiration and amazement. 

It becomes evident in the contemplation of these 
mysteries that man has no right to ignore the won- 
derfully complicated structure of his body when 
he decides that he shall go into business and man- 
ufacture foods for the human species. 

These enzymes or ferments have such a pro- 
found influence upon digestion and assimilation that 
we receive a shock when we learn that in the prep- 
aration of our food we destroy them or change their 
nature artificially. 



FERMENTS 47 

These mineral salts and ferments, — let us put 
it bluntly and nakedly, — are removed from our diet 
by commercial practices that pander to our false 
taste-standards and those who remove them have 
succeeded, to some extent at least, in establishing 
scientific justification for their work and are able 
at this stage of the world's enlightenment to fog the 
atmosphere quite enough to cloud any attempted 
work of reform under the darkness of controversy. 

Chemists and pathologists are to be found who 
are willing to go on record with some such state- 
ments as these: 

"Of the metabolism of foods, of chemical change, 
of the exact action of enzymes and bacteria, we are 
profoundly ignorant, therefore we should not give 
much consideration to the mineral content of our 
diet." 

"We get so many minerals in so many articles 
of food that we can afford to remove most of them 
from our diet, and, anyhow, so little is known about 
the conduct of these minerals when ingested with 
food that the subject is at least not important enough 
to occasion grave alarm." 

Signed statements such as these in spite of such 
cases as that of little Helen and her 235,262 com- 
panions constitute the defense of those whose food 
industries would suffer if the people enacted state 
and national laws that would forbid men to denature 
their food supply. 

For reasons of their own some men tell us that 
if we have enough carbohydrates, protein and fats, 
bread, meat and butter, we need not bother about 
the minerals or ferments of our food. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THESE MINERALS ARE LOST 
OR CHANGED BY CHEMISTS? 

The history of life on the surface of the earth is 
the history of food. Nature builds the bodies of 
men from food. If certain sixteen elements are 
necessary in food to build up our bodies, and we 
remove one or more elements, we invite decay and 
disease into the body. All food contains some of 
these building materials; other food— at least as 
the Creator made it — contain all of them. Some- 
times man , heedlessly removes some of these ele- 
ments, leaving the food poorer as building material. 

Thus we see that the menu card of breakfast, 
dinner and supper, is not a matter to be left to ac- 
cident or to an ignorant kitchen-drudge or to a 
food-factpry concerned chiefly in the profit-paying 
characteristics of its products. 

We have seen that phosphorus is so necessary to 
the life of the soil that the United States Govern- 
ment has forbidden the exportation of any of our 
limited supply of phosphate rock. If the one part 
of phosphorus in one thousand parts of earth in 
normal farm land is removed from the soil we have 
a crop failure. If any other of the mineral elements 
are removed we also have crop failure. 

Phosphorus in the soil is no more important than 
lime or iron, or potassium in the body. We will 
select lime to illustrate the work which the minerals 
found in our foods perform in the body. 



50 STARVING AMERICA 

If we kill a frog and place its still-pulsating 
heart on a slab of marble, it will be noticed that 
the frog's heart will not lose a single pulsation for 
a long time. Eventually, of course, it will collapse 
and become lifeless. If we wish to prolong its pul- 
sations for many hours, we need only bring it into 
the presence of a solution of lime. 

Under the mysterious influence of this common- 
est of earths, that dead heart will for hours show all 
the manifestations of life that might be seen if we 
could peer into the breast of the living animal. 

Lime makes it possible for the digestive ferments 
to perform their duties. 

If we rob our food of its lime digestion cannot 
go on. 

Rennet is a ferment. It is used to make curd 
from milk. Curd is the first step in the making of 
cheese. In order that the rennet may do its work 
it is necessary that the lime in the milk be made 
soluble and the cheese maker, in order to make it 
more soluble uses hydrochloric acid. 

Tartaric acid or even vinegar would assist in 
this. 

If the lime were not soluble, that is, if it did 
not enter into solution with a liquid the curd would 
never become cheese. This is proved by adding a 
little oxalic acid to the milk while making the curd, 
or by sterilizing it at the boiling point. 

The oxalic acid throws the lime out of solution 
so that it cannot assist the ferment to do its work 
and the ferment, deprived of the help of lime, refuses 
to perform its duty and the cheese is not made. 

If you should cut your finger the soluble lime in 
the blood causes it to coagulate and you do not 
bleed to death as you would if it were not for this 
soluble lime in your blood. With a knowledge of 



MINERALS LOST OR CHANGED 51 

these facts we see why lime is so necessary to us. 
When we diminish its proper quantity in our blood 
we lower our vitality and destroy our resistance to 
disease. 

The only way we can interfere with the presence 
of lime in our body is by removing it artificially 
from our food or by interfering with the ability of 
our organs to make use of it by eating food of a 
kind that robs our body of the lime that our food 
contains. 

In every kitchen, restaurant and hotel we are 
robbing our food not only of its lime but of many 
of its other mineral salts through our ignorant 
methods of cookery, and before our food has reached 
the kitchen we have permitted the manufacturer to 
l-ob it of a large quantity of its priceless mineral 
salts. 

When we study the records of defective teeth 
among school children we face only the surface 
symptom of much deeper ravages that are going on 
within the body unseen and unsuspected. 

Dr. James R. Mitchell, Lecturer in Chemistry at 
Forth Worth University Medical College, declares 
that 86% of the school children of Louisville have 
badly decayed teeth in spite of the fact that they 
live in the Lime Stone State! 

Doctor Mitchell has pointed out how our dentists 
prescribe tooth washes and tooth pastes; how they 
advocate oral hygiene; how they fill cavities and fit 
bridges, and all the time ignore the fact that the 
great cause of tooth destruction is to be found in 
lime and phosphorus starvation. 

Some dentists tell us that the sugar we take into 
our mouth in the shape of candies acts directly and 
destroyingly upon our teeth. They shut their eyes 



52 STARVING AMERICA 

to the fact that destruction starts first in the pulp 
of the teeth beneath the surface enamel. 

The vital processes of the body can not be carried 
on without lime. Consequently, if there is a defi- 
ciency of lime salts in the food, the body actually 
begins to tear down its own structure in order to 
obtain this necessary mineral. 

It burrows; into the only available source of 
lime supply, the soluble lime of the teeth and bones 
and gradually consumes that lime until, in the teeth, 
it leaves only a shell of enamel over the cavity. 

The enamel sooner or later cracks and breaks 
under the strain and the damage is discovered. The 
ruin was accomplished long before we had any evi- 
dence of it, although the opening up of an avenue for 
the entrance of bacteria from without hastens the 
decay. 

Sugar and fruit acids have no effect on the enam- 
el of the teeth. Sound teeth can be immersed in a 
solution of such acids and sugars for months and 
suffer no erosion. The sugar does not act directly 
on the teeth and the dentist treats the symptom, not 
the cause of our bone destruction. 

Sugar and lime have just as remarkable an affin- 
ity for each other as the iron and oxygen which we 
have described, so that when we consume an excess 
of mineral hungry sweets the sugar with irresistible 
thirst drinks up the soluble lime of the blood stream 
and the blood retaliates by sapping the soluble lime 
from the teeth and bones. 

Druggists know how wonderfully lime combines 
with sugar and accordingly they make what is 
known as Syrup of Lime. One thousand parts of 
water will take up one part of lime,' but if we add 
sugar to the water, it will take up thirty-five times 
as much lime. 



MINERALS LOST OR CHANGED 53 

Our children will suffer and our prospective 
mothers will suffer, if they get an excess of refined 
or denatured sugar in their diet or if our food in- 
dustries continue to remove the soluble minerals 
from the chief source of our food supply. 

We advance step by step in our study of the in- 
dispensable minerals of our food supply and as we 
advance we must bravely face the great cause of our 
infant mortality, the great cause of our pale and 
anaemic women, the great cause of our nervous and 
unfit men. We must continue to advance until the 
simple remedy for many of our infirmities is laid 
bare. 

Big butcher shops grind the bones of the ox or 
sheep or hog into what they call "chicken-bone." If 
we do not feed our chickens a plentiful supply of 
lime in the shape of such "chicken-bone" or in the 
shape of cracked oyster shells or some similar lime 
food, they will lay soft-shelled eggs. 

The dog which is not fed bones will have bad 
teeth. His skin will be tettered, his hair will fall 
out and his disposition will be cross. The lioness 
that is fed with meat alone and no lime in the shape 
of bones will bear cubs with cleft palates. 

Caged mice fed on processed corn meal and dis- 
tilled water will get "nerves" just as men and women 
robbed of their lime will get "nerves." As the lime- 
free diet is continued the mice will be stricken 
with convulsions. 

In the laboratory when pneumonia germs are 
studied it has been shown that when a stationary 
growth has been reached a little sprinkle of lime 
will revive the culture. 

Lime is necessary for tlie strength of the bones, 
for the hardness of the teeth, for the firmness of the 
muscles, for the tone of the nerves, for the coagula- 



54 STARVING AMERICA 

tion of the blood on demand, for every pulsation of 
the heart, for the digestion of our food, for the func- 
tioning of the kidneys and other vital organs, for the 
health of the body. 

When a baby is improperly weaned and deprivgd 
of its necessary lime, its bones will be softened and 
it will develop rickets. The muscle that is deprived 
of its lime will quiver and twitch. The nerve will 
do the same. 

We know how oxalic acid acts on the lime of the 
body when introduced with food. 

Food manufacturers who use other chemicals do 
not know how those chemicals interfere with the 
mysterious processes of life. They say that many 
food chemicals are "harmless" and some scientists 
are found to agree with them. 

But the fact remains that there is premature and 
untimely death everywhere. Is it unscientific to 
connect these deaths with the follies of our diet sys- 
tem? We leave that to you. One fact remains. 

This is now true : In the gradual breaking down 
of the food laws for which Doctor Wiley devoted 
twenty-nine years of his life, there are nearly twenty 
drugs which can be legally put into our **pure" food 
supply and there are twelve necessary elements 
which can be legally taken out of our "pure" food 
supply. 

Such facts are eloquent of commercial ignorance 
or guilt. 

The childish appetite of little Helen for "inno- 
cent" cakes^ "innocent" candy, "innocent" crackers, 
"innocent" white bread, led her gradually and insid- 
iously to the hour when her resistance to death was 
no longer equal to the 'pressure and with her Two 
Hundred Thirty-five Thousand, Two Hundred and 
Sixty-two companions she went on her way to give 



MINERALS LOST OR CHANGED 55 

testimony to the ignorance of those whose love for 
her was as high as the hills and as deep as the seas, 
but whose light through which to express that love 
was as dark as the night. 

Those who raise fancy poultry for the poultry 
show or prize chickens for the country fair know 
how to feed their animals according to rigid dietary 
laws. In consequence, we smile at the very thought 
of the farmer mixing with his carefully and scien- 
tifically prepared food, red, blue, green, yellow, 
brown, purple or any of the legal coal-tar dyes, 
borax, sulphurous acid, saccharin, sodium benzoate, 
sulphate of copper, aluminum sulphate, butyric 
ether, amyl ether, ethyl ether, oenanthic ether, va- 
lerianate ether, formic ether benzoic ether, acetic 
ether, etc. 

All these drugs are now legal with the exception 
of borax and saccharin. 

Although they are legal, the man who has his 
money invested in raising prize animals refuses to 
color and drug the food upon which they depend for 
their prize-taking qualities. Little pigs are ten- 
derly cared for. So are the young horse and the 
baby calf and wee chicks. 

Caution, vigilance, common-sense, scientific 
knowledge are required and exercised to produce 
stock that will yield a profit. 

In consequence when we invest our money in 
animals we feed them on a "balanced" diet and the 
young animals do not die when their food is of a 
proper kind. 

But human beings ! That is another matter. 

We make the law say : "Thou shalt not buy car- 
bolic acid, arsenic, opium, cocaine, unless the law's 
restrictions are removed by trained and licensed 
physicians." 



56 STARVING AMERICA 

Then we practically say : *Thy food may be what- 
soever the food panderer provides." 

Now let us tell you the startling fact that the 
white bread of America is a human destroyer. 

If you will read on we will now show you how 
your daily bread is being robbed of its vitalizing 
mineral elements and ferments. 

Then we will tell you how to go about the work 
of getting your share of straightforward, honest 
foods, such as nature provides for you. 



CHAPTER VII. 

WHITE BREAD STARVATION. 

Three times each day, for three hundred and 
sixty-five days in a year, the housewife in each of 
the twenty million households in the United States 
spreads a table with food for the pleasure and nutri- 
tion of her family. How many times is that? An- 
swer, you of a mathematical turn of mind! And 
each one of those billions of times — at least the ex- 
ceptions are too few to count — the housewife places 
one article of food on the table, whether in a man- 
sion or a hovel, whether the tables be loaded with 
the luxuries of life, or whether this be well-nigh the 
only article of food on the board. Is it to be won- 
dered at, that we call bread the "staff of life" ? 

But what if the staff on which one leans be 
broken? What of the man's, progress, then? Let 
us look at a few things about our modern bread. 

The flour advertisements in the newspapers and 
publications tell us peculiar and wonderful things. 
Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent to tell us 
that our flour is washed, brushed, scoured, screened 
and sifted through silk so that we get utterly per- 
fect flour! 

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent to ex- 
ploit anemic crackers, biscuits, cakes and our de- 
voted, solicitous mothers, believing these advertise- 
ments, feed these wonderful units of denatured nu- 
trition to their babes and rear a race of such vigor 
that it sends in one year two hundred thirty-five 



58 STARVING AMERICA 

thousand two hundred and sixty-two of its little ones 
under ten years of age where white bread and 
chalky biscuits are needed no more ! 

Nature never made a white grain of wheat, and 
man never made a white loaf of bread until about 
one hundred years ago in the city of London, when 
an idle epicure conceived the fetching idea of start- 
ling his guests with bread as white and lifeless as 
the aristocratic cloth on which it was served. 

The original grain of wheat contains, in organic 
form, all of the twelve mineral substances needed by 
the animal body. Chickens, guinea pigs or monkeys 
fed on whole wheat bread will thrive, but chickens, 
guinea pigs or monkeys fed on an exclusive white 
bread diet will die. 

How does the white bread get white? White 
bread gets white because from the ground grain of 
wheat three-fourths of the minerals, including the 
phosphorus, iron, lime, chlorine, silica, sulphur, po- 
tassium and magnesium are removed. 

These elements are contained in the brown outer 
skin of the wheat berry, called the bran, and in the 
*'shorts," "middlings," and ''tailings," which are 
sifted and bolted out of the ground meal, leaving 
principally the white starchy part of the interior 
part of the berry. 

Nature in her divine effort to teach us that we 
cannot interfere with the laws of life through thou- 
sands of years of agricultural experience has failed 
to teach us the priceless value of these subtle sub- 
stances which she goes through so many divers ways 
to assemble for our needs. 

Not alone are the minerals removed, but one of 
the wheat's ferments, discovered by M. Mege 
Mouries in the inner cortical part of the wheat is 
rejected in the fine white flour. Its function when 



WHITE BREAD STARVATION 59 

introduced into the body is not fully known, but as 
it is one of the things which we thoughtlessly de- 
stroy, we mention it here. 

Those who make our flour and our bread for us 
think they can "prove" that they are conferring a 
great blessing upon humanity in giving us the re- 
fined white product with which those slaughtered in- 
nocents were so familiar and when we raise a cry of 
protest against their ''proofs" they laugh and show 
us the signatures of chemists. 

What chemist's signature will open up those little 
graves and deliver back to the fond and empty arms 
of grieving parents the million children that have 
died in this country during the past four years ? 

The millers admit that they do not give the peo- 
ple white flour or white bread through their own 
choice, but that because the people think they want 
white flour and white bread they are obliged to 
pander to them. 

If we take an animal membrane, a bladder, and 
fill it with a solution of any mineral and hang it up, 
there will be no leakage through the skin ; not a drop 
will appear on the outside of the bladder. We can 
let the solution remain in the bladder for days and 
it will guard its contents as safely as a glass bottle. 
If we now take the filled bladder and immerse it 
in another solution of different density or of differ- 
ent kind, the contents of the bladder will immedi- 
ately begin to pass out through the walls of the blad- 
der into the solution on the outside of the bladder, 
while the solution on the outside will pass through 
the bladder membrane into the inside, so that event- 
ually we will find the solution on the outside and the 
solution on the inside exactly the same in character. 
The dissimilar liquids are now thoroughly dif- 
fused. This is called osmosis. It might also be 



60 STARVING AMERICA 

called life. Osmosis is going on in the body all the 
time. 

We recreate the mineral constituency of the blood 
every time we eat and thereby. we keep changing the 
character of the fluid on the outside of the cells in 
order to keep it different from the fluid inside so 
that osmosis during life never ceases. 

In fevers, accompanied by extreme exhaustion as 
the result of inability to consume food, or in cases of 
starvation, the fluids inside the cells and outside the 
cells gradually become identical in quality so that 
osmosis becomes very feeble and almost ceases. 
When it ceases altogether death arrives. 

The minerals which nature put into our wheat 
and which we so deliberately remove are lost to us 
forever and the vitalizing missions which they would 
have naturally and beneficently performed are never 
performed at all. 

Hundreds of tons of these "useless" bi-products 
are annually removed and devoted to purposes for 
which they were never intended. More of this later. 

This debauching has been going on now for a 
century and yet we stand in stupid bewilderment be- 
fore the advancing scourge of tuberculosis. 

We cannot seem to understand that we are de- 
liberately reducing our national vitality by every 
ounce of organic mineral salts that we take out of 
our food and destroy. 

Then as to the bran sifted out of the flour some 
millers say that the silica which the wheat berry 
contains is practically ^'ground glass" and he cau- 
tions us against feeding "ground glass" to our ten- 
der babes. 

They should also say that because wheat contains 
iron, it contains horse-shoes ; that because it contains 
lime, it contains bone dust or white- wash; that be- 



WHITE BREAD STARVATION 61 

cause it contains magnesium, it contains face powder 
that because it contains phosphorus, it contains 
match heads; that because it contains fluorine, it 
contains the enamel of human teeth and the whites 
of human eyeballs ; that because it contains chlorine, 
it contains bleaching compound ; that because it con- 
tains sulphur, it contains the flames of Hades. 

There are many prejudices to overcome in restor- 
ing whole wheat products and whole wheat bread 
with all their wealth of vitality to the people. The 
''ground glass" idea will probably meet with the sym- 
pathy of many doomed souls who are reluctant to 
give up their sickly loaf. 

Some of the millers say that this "ground glass" 
contained in the bran of the wheat is an irritant and 
that, therefore, people not in normal health cannot 
use it without injury. 

Some "Science Notes" fell into our hands in the 
month of December, 1911, stating that an "English 
Commission," but not mentioning what kind of an 
"English Commission," has been looking into the 
subject of bread and that it finds the presence of 
bran in the use of whole wheat to be advantageous 
in special cases, but that in general, it is an undesir- 
able element in bread because it is itself indigestible 
and interferes with the digestion of other nutritious 
factors in the food. 

Of couse, it is indigestible in the sense that in 
its course through the body it is not taken up by the 
body and transformed into tissue. 

We do not digest pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon or 
any other spices. Ground spices, like ground bran, 
contain much indigestible fibre but this fibre con- 
tains valuable properties, the influence of which 
upon the digestive processes is well known. 



62 STARVING AMERICA 

The miller who through his solicitude for our 
welfare would not permit us to eat whole wheat says 
nothing about our consumption of pepper, cinnamon, 
nutmeg or ginger. 

We all know that the seeds of strawberries, rasp- 
berries, figs and grapes are indigestible, yet no being 
discards the seeds out of strawberries, raspberries 
or figs before eating these luscious offerings of 
mother nature. 

The millers in their consternation at the thought 
of our eating the bran of the wheat fail to warn us 
against eating corn on the cob. Every time we eat 
a "roasting ear" we eat the ''bran" of the corn and 
every time we eat beans or peas, we eat the "bran" 
of the bean and the "bran" of the pea and it is 
well that we eat these things, because while they 
are not digested in themselves, they surrender to the 
body the invaluable mineral salts which they contain. 
Accordingly, while it may appear to the dullard 
that they have no place in the diet of man, they con- 
tribute wonderfully to the life-giving properties of 
his food. 

Just as chopped meat surrenders its mineral salts 
to the water in which it is immersed, through the 
processes of osmosis that we have described, so also 
does the bran of the wheat surrender its minerals 
to the body in the same way. But — ^the bran not 
only furnishes indispensable mineral salts to the 
body, but its chief virtue is as a regulator of the 
persistaltic action of the alimentary tract by which 
its contents are kept moving onward. 

One of the curses which white bread, or robbed 
bread, has inflicted on the people is constipation. A 
thousand ills are traceable to this disorder. 

Read the patent medicine ads to get an idea of 
how many thousands of people require "pills." 



WHITE BREAD STARVATION 63 

Inhibited peristalsis is the malevolent origin of 
the woes of so many American women who are 
afflicted with uterine and ovarian diseases. 

Bread made of the whole wheat just as it comes 
from nature, together with the other reforms for 
which these pages cry out, will save our daughters 
and our daughters* children from the evils which 
food follies have imposed upon them. 

In Dr. Albert Westlake's new edition of his book 
on "Babies' Teeth to the Twelfth Year," he says: 

"Babies' teeth should receive consideration at 
least six months before the child is born. Necessary 
elements in their building up are furnished at this 
period by the mother's blood, hence, the need of the 
purity of the latter. 

"Teeth require more organic phosphate (par- 
ticularly phosphate of calcium and carbonates of 
lime) than other parts of the body ; therefore, bone 
food is necessary for the mother (cow's milk, eggs, 
especially yolks, peas, beans, lentils, WHOLE 
WHEAT, OUTER GRAINS, etc.) 

"Dietetic treatment for the mother is very im- 
portant at this period while bone is forming. 

"The intestines of the child are also undergoing 
vital changes at this period and earlier. This in- 
cludes the primary fixation of the child's intestine 
in the left hypochondriac region. 

"It is, therefore, vital to the offspring to get 
perfect peristalsis of the mother's intestines. Elim- 
ination and evacuation should be regular WITH- 
OUT DRUGS." 

For this reason alone, the mother should not be 
robbed of the potassium, sodium, magnesium, iron, 
phosphorus, sulphur, silica and chlorine which the 
honest wheat affords. 



64 STARVING AMERICA 

The millers will never know how many babies 
they have handicapped by their disregard of the 
laws of nature or by their assumption that they 
know more than nature may teach. 

No chemist can tell us in terms of grams any- 
thing about the exact quantity of phosphorus, iron, 
potassium, lime, silica or chlorine which we should 
take into our bodies every day. Nature has fixed 
that mysterious and hidden thing for us. Confound- 
ed in our wisdom, we turn our backs and seek a new 
way through the dark. 

The chemist admits he can never tell us that, and 
three chemists at Columbia University devoted 
months to a study of three of these minerals, de- 
termining nothing as to the quantity of them re- 
quired, but determining everything as to their 
necessity. 

The millers and bread makers do not know the 
trail of wreckage which they have left in the wake 
of their mineral contempt. They do not know how 
they have burrowed into the vitality of human life 
while it is still in the mother's womb. They do not 
know to what extent they have been responsible 
for tuberculosis, diphtheria, pneumonia, scrofula, 
measles, scarlatina, ansemia, etc. 

If we could stop at this point and launch in the 
same manner our indictment against barley, rice, 
oats, com, many prepared cereals and many break- 
fast foods, all of them with a few lonely exceptions 
being robbed as wheat is robbed, we would achieve 
our goal of putting you on guard against the food 
crimes of the nation and show you how to prevent 
those crimes but we would go no faster than we are 
going now. Read carefully and you will learn. 

The crime of denaturing our food begins with 
wheat and we will stick to wheat and "wheat 



WHITE BREAD STARVATION 65 

products" until we have made it clear that we are 
to continue our journey downward into an abyss 
of national degeneracy if we do not stop and make 
such soundings as will tell us where we are. 

Normally healthy lungs give an acid reaction with 
litmus paper. This acid has been found to be phos- 
phoric acid. It is present in the lecithin of the 
lung tissues. 

In tuberculosis the lungs give a neutral or alka- 
line reaction with litmus paper due to the absence 
of phosphoric acid. 

In all cases of tuberculosis of the lungs a deposit 
of lime is found. Sometimes this deposit is very 
slight but as the disease makes headway it becomes 
so great that the anatomist has to deal with what 
is called "the chalky lung." 

It would be impossible for this lime to be de- 
posited in the lung tissues if the phosphoric acid of 
the lecithin in those tissues was normal. 

Chemistry, so far, has not established a final 
anaylsis of lecithin. Lecithin is a phosphoric com- 
pound of the body. Nuclein, however, which is an- 
other phosphoric compound of the same importance 
lis found to vary, depending upon the health of the 
individual, between 2.5 per cent and 9,5 per cent 
in its phosphorus content. 

The blood of a human being containing as little 
as 2.5 per cent of phosphorus in its nuclein substance 
shows a quantity just as deficient in the lecithin of 
the lung. 

On the contrary, where the blood of a vigorous 
body shows the maximum of 9.5 per cent of phos- 
phorus in its total mineral content, the lungs show 
an equally high percentage of this mysterious ele- 
ment and it is always found in the form of phos- 
phoric acid. 



66 STARVING AMERICA 

As you decrease the phosphoric acid in the lungs, 
you increase the lime deposit. As you increase the 
lime deposit you prepare an alkaline field where the 
germ of tuberculosis may take root and grow. 

As you phosphorize the blood you render it 
capable of supporting the nutrition of the lung 
tissues and as the lung is kept in health, it is pro- 
tected against the invasion of tuberculosis. 

We cannot go into a theater, a church, a crowded 
street car or walk along the dusty city street with- 
out inhaling the living micro-organisms which cause 
tuberculosis, but if our lungs contain their normal 
quantity of phosphoric acid, we need have no fear 
because the germs are destroyed as fast as they 
enter our bodies. 

If this were not so, everybody would be stricken 
at the same time with tuberculosis and nobody would 
resist the disease. 

It is the same with typhoid fever. In cases of 
typhoid epidemic, there are some who do not get 
the disease. They do not get it because their vitality 
is so normal that it resists the diseases. The absence 
of a proper supply of phosphorus in the blood is due 
to an insufficient supply of phosphorus in the sub- 
stances taken as food. 

Let it be remembered that from the hundreds of 
thousands of bushels of wheat "milled" every year 
in the United States, from the hundreds of thousands 
of bags of rice "polished" every year in the United 
States, from the tons and tons of barley "pearled" 
every year in the United States, from the enormous 
quantity of oats soaked, scoured, bleached and "pre- 
pared" every year in the United States, from the 
thousands of barrels of corn ground every year in 
the United States, the phosphorus is removed. We 
have seen what takes place when we remove phos- 



WHITE BREAD STARVATION 67 

phorus from the soil and we are now beholding the 
tragedy that is being enacted under our eyes as we 
remove phosphorus from our bread and from our 
bodies. More than half of the insane are consump- 
tives. A peculiar fact has been noted in connection 
with the bones of the insane. They are very brittle 
and easily broken. This brittleness is due to phos- 
phorus starvation. Where calcium phosphate is 
present in normal quantity the bone is tough and 
resilient. 

Remember three-fourths of these substances are 
removed from our daily bread. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

POLISHED RICE. 

As we gather up the shattered fragments of the 
broken statue that once stood so brave, so eminent 
and so long unmolested before the pale ignorance 
of the white wheat eater, we may catch in fancy 
the murmur of spirit voices, among them, little 
Helen's voice, saying: "We, the ghosts of little 
children, are patrolling the night pulling down from 
their high niches of darkness whatsoever symbols 
of disease and death we find. Yonder a skinny fin- 
ger beckons. It is the finger of bloodless fraud. 
Pull it down, its name is Polished Rice." 

Few Americans have ever eaten rice as nature in- 
tended them to eat it. The beautiful grain, midway 
between cream color and light brown in hue, with a 
flavor that the polished rice eater has never tasted, 
has been banished from the United States for many 
years. 

The robbed substitute is the brushed, scoured, 
polished and talcum coated grain of commerce so 
degraded and denatured by the processes through 
which it passes that if fed to the fowls of the barn 
yard they will die when given no other food. If 
fed on the natural grain containing all the elements 
which nature placed in it they will thrive. 

The "innocent" bowl of rice as we now scour 
and polish it served to the growing child and the 
convalescent struggling desperately upward out of 



70 STARVING AMERICA 

the snare of disease, will not support life. We have 
robbed it as we rob the wheat. 

Not the cry of the alarmist, this! Behold the 
facts. 

In the Philippine Islands they have a disease 
which they call beri-beri. We have similar diseases 
in the United States but we call them inanition, 
anaemia, neurasthenia, nervous prostration, par- 
alysis, death. 

Beri-beri journeys from one §tage to another 
through all of these experiences. 

Its name neither adds to its ability to kill nor 
detracts from its ability to kill. Those who get it 
die the death. 

Dr. V. G. Heiser in the year 1910, then Director 
of Health of the Philippine Islands, Doctor Fraser 
of Singapore, Dr. Aron of the Philippine Medical 
School, Dr. Highet of Siam, Dr. DeHaan of Java, 
produced evidence that showed conclusively that 
beri-beri is caused by a diet of polished rice such as 
is exclusively consumed in the United States. 

The polished rice does not introduce some mys- 
terious germ into the body. It simply starves the 
blood and tissues until they no longer offer a defense 
to the germ, and then it takes up its seat in the 
weakened body and develops. 

Some chickens were fed with polished rice and 
others with natural brown rice. As has been here 
set down the birds fed on polished rice died, the 
others thrived. 

In the months of January and February, 1910, 
there was a severe outbreak of beri-beri among the 
inmates of the Culion Leper Colony which resisted 
all treatment. 

Then all polished rice was discontinued and the 
natural grain substituted. The sick in the hospital 



POLISHED RICE 71 

were treated with rice polishings. Rice polishings 
contain the phosphorus compounds and other min- 
eral salts, ferments and nitrogenous products which 
are brushed, scoured and polished off the grain in 
order to make it white for the delicate eyes of pale 
women and children to glory in, for not in wisdora 
but in glory do they eat. 

A few months' diet of the natural grain to which 
the rice polishings had been added brought about 
complete cures and stopped the spread of the disease. 
Yet little Helen could not find a pound not even a 
short-weight pound of that natural brown rice in 
all the land. 

Science needed more evidence to convince it that 
man had no right to denature his food. 

So. Dr, Eraser, in the Straits Settlements, and 
Dr. Aron of the Philippine Medical School set about 
to prove that when we brush, scour and polish away 
the phosphorus compounds and other organic min- 
erals that are present in the pericarp of natural 
rice we rob the human organism of its requisite 
supply of these elements. 

After this fact had been demonstrated to the 
satisfaction of the physicians in the far east, it 
was again experimentally confirmed in chickens and 
later in human beings by feeding polished and un- 
polished rice to a group of railway workers in the 
Straits Settlements. 

The Quarterly Report of the Bureau of Health 
of the Philippine Islands for the first quarter, 1910, 
says: 

"The group of men that partook of the No. 
1 polished white Siam rice developed beri-beri 
within a period of approximately sixty days 
while the group that partook of the unpolished 



72 STARVING AMERICA 

rice remained free of the disease. Every ef- 
fort was made by interchange of clothing, by 
contact and by living in the same house to con- 
vey the disease to the group that ate of the 
unpolished rice but not a single case developed. 
The process was then reversed. The group that 
partook of the polished rice was changed to 
the unpolished rice and vice-versa and within 
a period of approximately sixty days the group 
partaking of the polished rice developed beri- 
beri. These experiments were further con- 
firmed in Manila by the use of rice polishings 
in the treatment of beri-beri patients who 
showed immediate improvement in their condi- 
tion and except when the disease was too far 
advanced promptly recovered. In view of the 
apparently certain evidence upon which the 
etiology of the disease now rests a recommen- 
dation has been made to the Governor-General 
of the Philippine Islands to forbid the use of 
polished rice in public institutions. It is hoped 
by this means not only to eradicate the disease 
from such places, but also that it may serve 
as an educational factor in disseminating knowl- 
edge as to the method by which beri-beri may 
be avoided." 

The Governor-General issued an executive order 
on June 3, 1910, to all health officers and presidents 
throughout the island, forbidding the use of polished 
rice in all government workshops, prisons, hospitals 
and other institutions and directing the officials hav- 
ing control of such institutions to see that the 
provisions of this edict were complied with at once. 
Polished rice was bad food in the Philippines but 
elsewhere people could do with it as they wished, 
firmed in Manila by the use of rice polishings 



POLISHED RICE 7S 

In the meantime China and Japan have both taken 
action against "robbed" rice by denying it a place 
in the diet of their soldiers and sailors. 

Under date of October 27, 1910, the ever-vigilant 
Doctor Harvey W. Wiley, writing from the Bureau 
of Chemistry, Washington, D. C, to the writer, 
said: 

*'While beri-beri is not a disease common to 
this country, perhaps, due to the fact that our 
diet is not composed exclusively, or almost ex- 
clusively, of rice, yet it seems to me we should 
not even in a small way permit a condition of 
nutrition which would favor the development of 
such a disease as beri-beri or some other dis- 
order due to the debasement of rice from pol- 
ishing. Rice is becoming a more general diet 
in this country and the dealer who first begins 
the campaign for a pure, unadulterated rice will 
surely promote the cause in a commercial way 
which will do much toward protecting the health 
of the people." 

Physiologists recognize that organic compounds 
of phosphorus are absolutely necessary to the health 
and well being of man. This fact is balanced by 
another fact of startling importance. Man, unlike 
the plant, is unable to manufacture his own organic 
compounds of phosphorus from inorganic phos- 
phorus. 

Doctor Alexander Bryce of Birmingham, Eng- 
land, goes as far as to declare that "it is even prob- 
able that a daily supply of the different compounds 
of organic phosphorus is necessary in the food, as 
no proof exists to show that nucleins, lecithins, phos- 
phatides or phytins are capable of being substituted 
one for the other." 



74 STARVING AMERICA 

We know that beri-beri owes its origin to a defi- 
ciency of the organic compounds of phosphorus. 

Schaumann has shown that polished rice which 
introduces tropical beri-beri or even the ship vari- 
ety of beri-beri which arises among the European 
crews of sailing vessels forced to live on food largely 
deprived of its organic phosphorus, will also produce 
polyneuritis in fowls. Schaumann proved that bar- 
ley and white wheat flour can induce the same 
disease. He also showed that by demineralizing 
foodstuffs of any kind through the action of sol- 
vents or by high temperature the same disease can 
be inducer" 

It has also been shown that physicians cannot 
supplement the mineral deficiency of food with 
organic or inorganic phosphates. The patient under 
such treatment will die just as quickly as he would 
under no treatment at all. But food products rich 
in organic compounds of phosphorus such as peas, 
beans, wheat bran, barley polishings, rice polishings, 
corn phytin (the parts of the grains which are re- 
moved in milling) when added to the demineralized 
or defective foodstuffs are capable of preventing the 
development of the disease and can cure it when 
present. These organic carriers of phosphorus must 
be present with the other food in sufficient quantities 
to supply at least two grams of phosphorus per day, 
that being the minimum amount required for an 
adult. 

Remember that beri-beri is simply an extreme 
state of mineral starvation. Between perfect health 
and beri-beri there are a hundred mile posts each 
one representing another by-post into the barren 
desert of disease or death. 

The necessity of phosphorus in the human or- 
ganism and the necessity of administering it in such 



POLISHED RICE 75 

an organized form that it is capable of being as 
similated has been proved. 

Despite the establishment of this fact, terrible 
and tremendous in its significance, we carelessly 
destroy the organized minerals for which surgeon 
and physician even at the uttermost extremity of 
death can find no substitute. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OTHER NATIONS ALARMED. 

A statement made by Dr. Frederick Gowland 
Hopkins, Fellow of the Royal Society, Reader in 
Chemical Physiology, University of Cambridge and 
an investigator of European fame, was sent to the 
writer by Miss May Yates, Founder and Honorable 
Secretary of the Bread and Food Reform League 
of England, in the month of May, 1912. 

"The superior value," says Doctor Hopkins, 
**of whole wheat meal lies in the fact that it 
retains certain, at present, unrecognized food 
substances, perhaps in very minute quantities 
whose presence allows our systems to make full 
use of the tissue-building elements of the grain. 
These substances of undetermined nature are 
apparently removed to a great extent from fine 
white flour in the milling. 

"I began long ago a series of experiments 
on the relative tissue-building values of fine 
white flour and of flour which contains a large 
proportion of the whole grain. These experi- 
ments were made among others in the endeavor 
to discover the nature of the unknown sub- 
stances which I have just mentioned. In their 
existence I believe greatly because of my experi- 
mental results." 
Doctor Hopkins experimented with an eighty per 
cent whole wheat meal which though not containing 



78 STARVING AMERICA 

all of the wheat yet had a much larger proportion of 
the grain than does white flour. Even with such 
material his results were remarkable as will be 
seen. His conclusions are: 

"All my work to date confirms my belief in 
the superior food value of standard whole wheat 
bread. After definitely proving that young 
animals grow with very much greater rapidity 
on brown flour than on white flour, I have been 
able to improve the tissue-building rate of the 
white flour subjects by adding to their white 
flour an extract made from the brown flour. 
To make the best use of any food material such 
as the proteins, etc., certain other food sub- 
stances, and possibly a variety of them must 
also be present in definite proportions. 

"If one essential food constituent which 
ought to make up say even as little as one per 
cent of the total food is present in only half its 
normal amount, then when it is a case of build- 
ing up the tissues, the system will only be able 
to make use of half of the other food elements, 
even if these other elements make up the main 
bulk of the food." 

At this point Dr. Hopkins reaches the most sig- 
nificant paragraph of his statement. Here are his 
words : 

"This principle has long been recognized as 
regards plant life and growth. A plant, in order 
to attain perfect growth, must find in the soil a 
certain minimum of each of many elements. 
Consider, for example, the element potassium.. 
Suppose only half of the necessary amount of 
potassium be present, then no matter how abun- 
dant may be all the other soil and air constitu- 



OTHER NATIONS ALARMED 79 

ents, their normal utilization is limited to one 
half. The rate of growth and the ultimate de- 
velopment of the plant are consequently 
depressed. 

"The absolute amount of potassium em- 
ployed in growth is very small compared, say, 
with the carbon or nitrogen ; but any deficiency 
in it limits growth as surely as a deficiency in 
the more important elements. The substance 
of unknown nature which I just now mentioned 
may need to be present in very small amount but 
if the necessary minimum is not available, the 
utilization, in tissue growth or repair, of all 
other constituents is infallibly deficient. In 
the process of converting the wheat grain to the 
fine white flour these unknown elements are 
lost or destroyed to a great extent. It follows 
that no matter how much iron, phosphorus, etc., 
may be retained in the white flour our systems 
cannot make the best use of them." 

In addition to Dr. Hopkin's statement. Miss Yates 
supplied the writer with a statement signed by Dr. 
E. S. Eddie and Dr. G. C. Simpson, confirmed by 
Professor Benjamin Moore, professor of bio-chemis- 
try at the University of Liverpool, offering further 
irrefutable evidence of the essential health-giving 
qualities of the bran of the wheat grain discarded 
in milling white flour. 

Doctors Eddie and Simpson are members of the 
research staff of the School of Tropical Medicine, 
University of Liverpool. 

"It has been proved by Braddon and other 
workers in the East that exclusive use of pol- 
ished rice as a diet leads to a form of peripher- 
nal neuritis. This disease does not occur in 



80 STARVING AMERICA 

those native races who use whole rice ag a diet. 
Our own experiments have been extended to 
similar work in relation to the stripping of the 
outer case from the wheat berry so as to pro- 
duce a white bread instead of a whole or stan- 
dard bread and we find that parallel results are 
often obtained when the outer layers are ex- 
cluded from the diet with both wheat and rice. 
These experiments clearly demonstrate that the 
outer part of the grain contains the essential 
constituents for the nutrition of the nervous 
system both in growing animals and in adults." 

(Signed) E. S. EDDIE. 

(Signed) G. C. SIMPSON. 

The following are some of the details of the re- 
search work now being carried out with standard 
and white breads in the bio-chemical department of 
the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine by Pro- 
fessor Benjamin Moore, Chief of the Department: 

'^Groups of pigeons have been fed on fine 
white bread made from white flour guaranteed 
to be unbleached and unadulterated, while sim- 
ilar groups of pigeons have been given an 
ordinary quality of standard whole wheat bread 
bought from a regular baker. The white bread 
pigeons have all speedily developed marked 
symptoms of ill-nutrition and serious nerve de- 
rangements. Besides losing weight they sit 
listless and shivering, lose power in their legs, 
suggesting nerve paralysis, while many develop 
convulsions. 

''The standard bread pigeons on the other 
hand, keep healthy and up to normal weight. 

"In another series of experiments pigeons 
which had developed grave nervous symptoms 



OTHER NATIONS ALARMED 81 

on such diet recovered completely when after 
a week of special nursing they were placed on 
an exclusive standard bread diet during their 
convalescence. 

"All the recent work done in our bio-chemical 
laboratories proves beyond question that in all 
cereals, such as wheat, barley, oats and rice, 
there are series of important substances incor- 
porated in the inner layer of the husk which are 
essential to the nutritive value of the grain. If 
these elements are eliminated in the milling or 
preparation of the grain, a diet largely composed 
of cereals or bread thus denatured will not only 
fail adequately to nourish the body, but will 
tend to set up active disease. 

"Certain of the diseases of mal-nutrition 
among children, notably rickets, scurvy- 
rickets, tetany and convulsions present symp- 
toms very similar to those we note in our white 
bread pigeons. So striking is this similarity 
that physicians who have followed up our work 
are already treating certain of their scurvy- 
ricket patients with a diet of standard bread. 

"Our nerves as a nation are much less stable 
than in the days prior to white bread diet. All 
our work suggests that the growing tendency of 
the age to neurasthenia, 'nerves,' ets., is not 
unlikely due to removing from our diet those 
very elements of cereal foods which nature has 
hid in the husk of the grain and which man in 
his ignorance discards." 

(Signed) DR. BENJAMIN MOORE. 

The letter with which Miss May Yates accom- 
panied the above statement is as follows : 



82 STARVING AMERICA 

THE EDUCATIONAL HEALTH AND FOOD CAMPAIGN 
INAUGURATED AT 

THE MANSION HOUSE 

UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF H. R. H. THE PRINCESS 
CHRISTIAN, BY 

THE BREAD AND FOOD REFORM LEAGUE. 

(A purely uncommercial, educational and non- 
political association.) Supported by The National 
League for Physical Education and Improvement. 
The Royal Institute of Public Health, The National 
Conference on Infantile Mortality, The Social In- 
stitute's Union, The Children's Protection League, 
The Mothers' Union, etc. 

'^Although an act has been passed dealing with 
the feeding of school children, it does not touch chil- 
dren who are WRONGLY FED, and who, through 
ignorance, are handicapped for life, mentally and 
physically, by scanty or improper feeding. 

"As prevention is better than cure, a knowledge 
of the right selection and proper preparation of 
food is of vital interest to all classes of society, for 
a deficient supply of materials to form muscles, 
bones, teeth, brains and nerves is most injurious 
to the health, stamina and welfare of the rising 
generation." 

Headquarters: 5, Clements Inn, 

Strand, London, W. C. 

May 3, 1912. 

Dear Sir: — 

As my attention has been directed to a contro- 
versy that you have held with the American Miller 
on the subject of Whole Meal Bread, I venture to 
send you the report of our Bread and Food Reform 
League, the report of some physiological experiments 
showing the superiority of brown whole meal and 



OTHER NATIONS ALARMED 83 

cream colored bread over the very white bread in 
general use. 

You will also find a summary of papers on the 
same subject that I read at the Portsmouth meeting 
of the British Association and the -Health Congress 
of the Royal Institute of Public Health. 

Hoping these papers will interest you, believe me, 
Yours truly, 
(Signed) MAY YATES, Hon. Sec. 
Alfred W. McCann, Esq. 



CHAPTER X. 

PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE. 

In March, 1912, Dr. Armand Gautier addressed 
an audience in Paris. He declared that man in the 
course of his evolution had lost the instinct of nour- 
ishing himself. Eating has thus become an art which 
has to be learned by man, while the lower animals 
when left to themselves have an innate knowledge 
of the proper food. It is absolutely necessary that 
mankind possess a certain amount of scientific 
knowledge in order that we may choose our proper 
diet. 

Man has indeed lost the instinct that the beast 
still possesses. That instinct would enable him to 
select, as the beast selects, the food that would pre- 
vent disease, but man has been given intelligence 
and will with which to select his food. The choice 
should not be turned over to an ignorant kitchen 
drudge. 

Food underlies all art, all progress, all peace, 
all happiness ; it underlies the existence and safety of 
the world. 

"We must curtail our waste of food products 
in the home, on the farm and in transit, for every 
pound of food that is produced is needed, as fully 
one-half of the people in the world go to bed hungry 
every night," declared Colonel Henry Exall, presi- 
dent of the Texas Industrial Congress of Dallas. 
"The lofty human thought that suggested the 
means to bring together the august ambassadors of 



86 STARVING AMERICA 

all the nations in conference at The Hague," he 
continued, ''to form compacts for international and 
permanent peace is worthy of the most exalted praise 
of this enlightened age, and God forbid that its edicts 
should not be perpetual and everlasting ; but I warn 
you that no parchment yet manufactured will be 
strong enough to make a treaty binding against a 
cry for bread." 

We know that nature obtains her building ma- 
terials from food. All food contains some of these 
building materials. Some food contains all of 
them, except where man ignorantly removes them. 
If we for a few months eat food deficient in some of 
these building materials we quickly feel the effects 
in our general health. 

When the laws under which nature operates are 
suspended, she simply does not operate. Man might 
as well expect a jeweler to make a watch without 
the materials from which the wheels and springs 
and screws are made as to expect nature to make a 
drop of normal blood without the elements that enter 
into the composition of blood. 

Our food is the most important thing in life be- 
cause upon it all other things depend. We digest 
and assimilate that food in obedience to fixed laws. 
If we keep well without knowing those laws we are 
fortunate. It is evident that we should make an 
effort to understand and apply them. We have great 
need to look well to the sources of our food supply. 

The cow that is fed on the denatured waste 
product of the cotton-seed oil industry of the south, 
or the demineralized brewer's grain, or corn-oil- 
cake and similar debased cattle foods, cannot furnish 
us a proper supply of milk. 

The cow that is given a normal oxygen supply 
and fed on natural grains and on the grass of the 



PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE 87 

field is, like the horse, free from tuberculosis. The 
cow -is fed for milk production. The horse is fed for 
vitality and breeding. 

As a result practically no horse can be found 
afflicted with tuberculosis, whereas almost half 
of the cows of the States of New Jersey and New 
York are so afflicted. This seems to be a sweeping 
statement yet it ig absolutely true. The milkman 
will not give his new-born calf the milk from its 
tuberculosis mother, yet he is not always so particu- 
lar about the new born babe of the human family. 
He has no money invested in the latter! 

Not only is there a deficiency of phosphoric acid 
in the lungs of the tuberculous but there is the same 
deficiency in the milk of tuberculous cows. 

Milk is produced in the tissues, not from the food 
direct. The milk of the cow cannot be healthy unless 
its tissues are healthy. 

Just as tuberculous lungs give a neutral or alka- 
line reaction with litmas paper, so does the milk of 
tuberculous cows contain an excess of the alkaline 
minerals. An alkaline field is necessary for the 
growth of disease-breeding bacteria. 

The percentage of phosphoric acid in cow's milk 
is found to vary between ten per cent and fifty per 
cent of its total mineral content. Some milk is 
so poor in phosphorus that its caseine can be an- 
alyzed without showing a trace of this mineral. 

Let us not forget the difference in the health of 
human beings, the mineral content of whose blood 
shows 2.5 per cent of phosphorus and those whose 
blood shows 9.5 per cent. 

Analysis also shows that some milk is ten times 
as rich in iron as other milk. One per cent of the 
minerals of some milk is iron, whereas, but one- 



88 STARVING AMERICA 

tenth of one per cent of the minerals of other milk 
is iron. No wonder infants die! 

A large portion of cow*s milk is of poor quality, 
low in phosphorus, low in iron. 

You ought to know whether the milk on which 
your child is fed contains the least possible quantity 
of phosphorus and iron or the greatest possible 
quantity. If your infant is fed on milk containing 
ten per cent of phosphorus and one-tenth of one per 
cent of iron, and your neighbor's infant is fed on 
milk containing fifty per cent of phosphorus and one 
per cent of iron, you can tell which infant is most 
likely to live. 

In 1910 there were 19,000 children who died 
in New York City under two years old, and 15,000 
of them were less than a year old. The Health Com- 
missioner roused by these facts began looking after 
the city's milk supply. Among other things he 
opened fifteen stations where infants' supplies can 
be had and instruction is given in the care and feed- 
ing of babies. This work is as yet barely begun, 
but in 1911 the deaths under two years had dropped 
from 19,269 to 17,574. 

Love is sometimes a matter of phosphorus and 
iron. 

When the child leaves the milk stage again it 
is necessary to see that its iron and phosphorus are 
not interfered with. Love will be awake and see to 
that. Ignorance will sleep as before. Love blesses ; 
ignorance kills. The laws of life are fixed. Why 
give the child normal milk for the first two years 
of its life and put it on denatured grains thereafter? 
Healthy and normal milk for its first two years and 
after that healthy and normal grains, vegetables and 
fruits, and above all, honest and normal bread will 
save your child, 



PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE 89 

One of the arguments that the defenders of white 
bread advance is that people do not live on bre^^i 
alone; they eat other things. 

The children of the poor live largely on bread, 
and if it is an honest loaf of bread made from honest 
wheat grown out of honestly nurtured soil, there is 
no necessity for anxiety with regard to health, even 
if for a time there is bread alone to eat. 

Such bread will support life and if, for a time, 
no other article of food were present the child would 
have a life-sustaining meal. 

But if that bread has been debased and de- 
natured, there is nothing else for the spirit of justice 
to do but to cry to heaven for vengeance. 

The well fed business man who eats a great 
variety of food and whose digestion is good will not 
fade and die simply because he eats white bread. He 
runs a good chance through his generous diet of 
getting most of his body-requirements, but his wife 
who stays at home and her children with their bread 
and coffee for breakfast and their "hurry-up" 
luncheon from the "delicatessen store," they are the 
first victims. 

Even the vegetables cooked at home are largely 
denatured, as the soluble mineral salts which they 
contain are thrown down the waste pipe with the 
water in which the cooking is done. 

We know that the phosphorus, potassium and 
iron of the body are at war with the germs of tuber- 
culosis to say nothing of other disease-breeding 
germs. Metchnikoff describes the white corpuscles 
of the blood-stream as defenders of the body against 
disease through their power to destroy disease-breed- 
ing bacteria. This power he attributes to the or- 
ganic phosphorus compound of the white corpuscles 
v^hich the scientist calls nuclein. When these phos- 



90 STARVING AMERICA 

phorus compounds are normal in the body invading 
bacteria are destroyed as fast as they enter. When 
the defending army of phosphorus is weak, the in- 
vading bacteria take possession and triumph. 

In the meantime are not we making the defend- 
ing army as weak as possible by removing the phos- 
phorus, iron and potassium from the most of the 
food we eat? 

Every time we boil a potato and throw away the 
water in which it is boiled we throw away potas- 
sium. Every time we make a white flour from the 
grain of wheat or send a bag of polished rice to the 
market place or a carton of pearled barley to the 
grocery store or a sack of corn meal to the kitchen 
or a carton of scoured oats to the pantry or a pack- 
age of bi-product breakfast food to the morning 
meal of our children, we are doing our best to starve 
the defending army of phosphorus and make it 
possible for the powers of darkness and disease to 
triumph. 

If phosphorus and iron and potassium and the 
other minerals which we have been considering are 
so necessary, why does the physician not give us a 
bottle containing them and let us put them back 
into our own bodies after we have taken them from 
our foods ? 

The physician tries to do just that. He has his 
iron tonics and his phosphorus tonics and his potas- 
sium iodides, but they do not get into the body as 
they ought. Because these minerals must be organ- 
ized as they are organized in nature before the 
human body can make proper use of them. 

You will remember that we showed you that a 
mysterious substance known as chlorophyl enabled 
the plant to take these non-living or inert minerals 
from mother earth and transform them into its tis- 



PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE 91 

sues. You then probably asked the question : "What 
has all this got to do with me or with this subject?" 

We have reached the explanation. 

The human body does not possess the power that 
the plant possesses through its chlorophyl to appro- 
priate these minerals to its needs and it must, there- 
fore, depend upon the plant which has that power 
in order to obtain in an organized and assimilable 
form the elements on which it depends. 

If this were not so we could go direct to the stone 
pile or bed of earth and eat clay, for the clay con- 
tains the elements of life. 

It is through his food that man must get these 
minerals, hence iron, phosphorus, potassium, etc., 
in the form of drugs do not cure tuberculosis or any 
other disease. 

The physicians who used to study only drugs 
and symptoms will now study and prescribe foods, 
foods, foods. The despised Italian fruit-vender at 
the street corner is a noble American institution. By 
his display of greens and fruits, he constantly 
tempts mineral-starved bodies to eat these raw and 
life-giving carriers of mineral salts. No one knows 
what a blessing the Italian has brought into this 
hurried, unthinking, ignorant land through his fruit 
stand. 

Grains and fruits and vegetables have the power 
of picking up the various necessary minerals from 
mother earth and forming them into the complex 
organic compounds ready for animal life to assim- 
ilate. 

This book may not oblige people to heed the 
light. But there are many afflicted people in the 
world who murmur : ''How is it possible that there 
can be a merciful or a loving God when he so 



92 STARVING AMERICA 

scourges the earth with sickness ?" To these in par- 
ticular is this chapter addressed. 

"As we sow, so shall we reap." As we prepare 
the way for disease so shall we suffer disease. If we 
gratify every whim of our palates, if we eat with 
the eye rather than with the intelligence, we cannot 
at the same time blame God for sickness. The folly 
is with ourselves and with our wayward, selfish, un- 
thinking habits of life. 

The great obstacle in the way of reform is the 
housewife's desires. She wants unnatural colors and 
characteristics, not thinking or not knowing that 
these defeat the purpose for which she buys food. 

She wants yellow butter, artifically colored with 
a mineral or so-called vegetable dye, though she is 
satisfied to have a white Swiss cheese which is the 
natural color of the milk from which butter and 
cheese are made. 

She wants white bread and white rice but doesn't 
ask for white oatmeal. 

She asks for bleached apricots, bleached peaches, 
bleached apples and bleached pears from the dried 
fruit family, but she is satisfied to have her raisins 
and prunes and currants unbleached, almost black. 

Her soda biscuits must be the hue of a starched 
shirt front, but black devil cake and dark brown 
ginger bread do not frighten her. 

Give nature a beautiful color scheme that satisfies 
the eye, and take from her the elements necessary 
to build a healthy body and nature will fail. 

For our two hundred thirty-five thousand two 
hundred and sixty-two children under ten years of 
age who died in one year in these United States, we 
would not give nature her demands, and nature 
failed! 



PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE 9S 

Commercial rapacity and dishonesty with the 
wide freedom it now enjoys through the absence 
of effective laws that would control its lust for gain, 
is one of the great enemies in the path of reform. 

No sooner had references to the virtues of natural 
brown rice begun to appear in newspapers and pub- 
lications, particularly in the editorial columns of 
Collier's Weekly, than an attempt was made for com- 
mercial purposes to deceive the people into believing 
that the long debased white rice of the market place 
was really after all the "natural, unpolished rice" 
which had been made the subject of so much dis- 
cussion in the medical profession of the Philippines. 

Until about a year ago practically all the rice on 
the market was coated with glucose and talc. Such 
rice was known as "coated and polished rice," but 
some of the rice traders conceived the idea that by 
omitting the glucose and talc, the rice, even though 
it had been scoured and brushed and robbed, could 
legitimately masquerade under the title "unpol- 
ished." This was assumed evidently on the ground 
that inasmuch as it had not been polished with fur- 
niture oil and a chamois skin it could be truthfully 
said to be "unpolished." 

Accordmgly, because the people had never seen 
the natural brown grain and therefore had no stand- 
ard by which to make comparison for themselves, 
a so-called "unpolished rice" appeared and in its 
advertisements clamored for the faith and favor of 
the helpless and the weak. 

It was the old rice in everything but the veneer 
of glucose and talc! What of that? Who would 
know it? 

The packages in which it was offered for sale 
bore such phrases as ; "Great Natural Health Food." 



94 STARVING AMERICA 

"Uncoated and Unpolished." "Recommended by Phy- 
sicians." **Most Nutritious." 

Inside the package an educational slip of paper 
was introduced which said: 

''The treatment of rice, called 'polishing,' to meet 
the American demand that it look white and glossy 
removes some of its most valuable properties and is 
the chief reason why ordinary commercial rice lacks 
in nutriment as compared with the natural unpol- 
ished product eaten by the principal rice consuming 
nations." 

Yes, the advertisement actually condemned the 
polished rice in these words. 

Then followed a chemical analysis of fats, pro- 
teins, sugar and starch, leaving the mineral sub- 
stances strangely out of the tabulation. 

To this fraudulent appeal for favor this para- 
graph was appended : 

"The above comparison shows clearly why the 
average grocery store rice lacks in flavor and food 
value." 

The very wording under which this food product 
was introduced betrayed the fact that its commercial 
progenitors knew what they were doing and did not 
hesitate in such a grave matter, affecting the public 
health, to exploit impoverished foods as life-savers 
and body-builders. 

For twenty-nine years Doctor Wiley fought the 
food adulterators, yet in the year of our Lord nine- 
teen hundred and twelve, nearly six years after the 
Pure Food and Drugs Act of June 30, 1906, became 
a law, we find such avaricious traders dishonestly 
using the efforts of reformers, appealing to the ig- 
norance of the public, spragging the wheels of re- 
form, and brazenly administering an antidote for 
"trade reasons" to the struggling spirit of truth. 



PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE 95 

Are we content to permit the grasping hands of 
food panderers to reach into the sacredness of our 
homes to the destruction of our offspring for the 
unholy profit which is their god? 

Laws are needed, but mightier than laws in 
bettering the conditions under which humanity lives, 
is education. 

We needed no law to compel us to use the tele- 
graph, the telephone or the electric light when elec- 
tricity was developed for practical use. Most of us 
need no laws to keep us from buying poisons. Doc- 
tors used to think it was the right thing to bleed 
their patients, sometimes to death, but we need no 
laws now to prevent such bleeding. 

When the average normal mortal knows what is 
not good for him, he will usually leave it alone with- 
out the interference of a law. 

This book attempts to turn on the light and show 
the facts. The knowledge of the truth will result in 
the demand of the housewife for honest whole wheat 
meal from which nothing has been subtracted and 
to which nothing has been added, so that from it a 
loaf of life-sustaining bread may be made for her 
child. 

She will demand an honest whole wheat break- 
fast food ground to the same consistency as the 
farina and other highly debased breakfast foods with 
which she is familiar, but unlike such breakfast 
foods, containing all of the elements that nature 
put into the wheat. 

If she doesn't make her own bread she will de- 
mand that the bread of the baker be made from 
honest whole wheat meal, not a mixture of eighty 
per cent patent flour and twenty per cent so-called 
entire wheat flour which is not entire wheat at all. 



96 STARVING AMERICA 

When Doctor Sylvester Graham advocated the 
wheat meal that took its name from him and has 
since been known as **graham flour" he did not ad- 
vocate the commercial make-shift of modem times 
that is made by adding thirty-five pounds of bran to 
one hundred and sixty-one pounds of white flour, 
producing a barrel of so-called "graham flour" 
weighing one hundred and ninety-six pounds. 

He did not advocate an imitation "graham flour" 
containing 7 per cent bran instead of 10 per cent; 
10 per cent shorts instead of 16 per cent ; 5 per cent 
coarse middlings instead of 14 per cent; 6 per cent 
fine middlings instead of 16 per cent; 72 per cent of 
starch instead of the 44 per cent natural to the 
wheat. 

The natural, honestj, "graham flour" sells at 
$5.00 per barrel ; the imitation can be prepared from 
by-products for less than $4.00 per barrel. 

The dealer with an extra dollar profit in sight 
would rather sell the imitation. Everybody is look- 
ing for profit. So, quality and honesty suffer and 
food is juggled. 

The housewife will make her biscuits and cakes 
and crackers from the whole wheat and she will 
use that meal in making the creams and sauces with 
which she dresses her intelligently cooked vegetables 
using the water in which she cooks them. 

The little flecks of brown and gold which the 
honest wheat meal contains add unusual daintiness 
of appearance to the sauce and the flavor of such 
sauce can never be appreciated until it has been 
tasted. 

She will demand the natural brown rice even 
though it requires a little longer time to cook it and 
she will demand unpearled barley and unsoaked, un- 
scoured, unsteamed, unbleached oatmeal. She will 



PROPER FOOD OR MEDICINE 9^ 

demand the old-fashioned, southern stone-ground, 
undegerminated corn meal made from all of the 
corn, and when she learns how to make her por- 
ridges and her corn cake and her oaten cake and 
when she sees around her happy, healthy, children 
with sparkling eyes and well-rounded cheeks and 
sturdy limbs, she will begin to believe that love is 
indeed sometimes a matter of phosphorus and iron. 



CHAPTER XL 

MEAT EATING INSUFFICIENT. 

Some of you will think that we have omitted to 
consider one large item of ordinary food, and the 
meat eater will ask: "But do not I make up in my 
steaks and chops for what the food industries take 
from me, and thus is not my diet well balanced ?" 

No, your meat does not balance your diet. If 
you did as the meat-eating beast does, and ate the 
blood and bones of the animal as the dog and tiger 
and panther do, you would get all the elements of 
life which tlie flesh and blood and bones contain, all 
the phosphates and oxides, all the calcium and iron, 
all the nitrates and sulphates ; but, when we kill our 
meat-producing animals, we drain them of their 
blood and throw away their bones, and thus with 
the exception of nitrogen, potassium and phosphor- 
us, we get little else in our flesh diet but the waste 
products which at the moment of its death are being 
developed in the animal's tissues. 

It is easy to bring about in young dogs a condi- 
tion resembling '^rickets" in children by feeding 
them on meat and fat alone. If we add pulverized 
bone or calcium carbonate to their meat and fat, 
the animals recover. Undue reliance on your beef 
or lamb or pork or veal, while it may satisfy the 
appetite, will not satisfy the body-needs. 

We do not agree altogether with those who say 
that there is no place whatsover for animal flesh in 
the diet of any man. We know that there are times 



100 STARVING AMERICA 

when a meat diet seems valuable provided the meat 
is taken from a healthy animal and none of its ex- 
tractive juices are removed in the cooking. 

Yet we should remember that catarrh, rheuma- 
tism and blood diseases can never be cured where 
meat is consumed more than two or three times a 
week and that these diseases are usually associated 
with flesh-eaters. 

For every pound of beef consumed by man, ten 
pounds of com are necessary to produce that pound 
of beef. A pound of beef will support one man for 
a given length of time, but the quantity of corn nec- 
essary to make that pound of beef would support 
more than ten men for the same length of time. 

When we eat the flesh of the animal we eat the 
end-products of the animal's life processes, urea, 
uric acid, etc. ; when we eat the grains and legumes, 
the nitrogen supply is just as great, even greater, 
and without the urea. 

The meat eater who demands meat every day 
should eat only such meat as was permitted by the 
Mosaic law and slaughtered by an orthodox Jew 
who believes in that law. So safeguarding his appe- 
tite for flesh, he will eat less of the disease-producing 
elements found in the animal's blood at the moment 
of its death under commercial methods 

In his animal chemistry Liebig cites the rest- 
lessness and incessant movements of meat-eating 
animals, lions, tigers, panthers, hyenas, wolves, and 
observes that men who habitually eat meat manifest 
similar irritability and lack of repose. 

Prof. James Rollins Stonaker of Stanford Uni- 
versity, put some rats in rotary cages containing 
speedometers that registered the number of miles 
traveled by each rat. Some were fed meat and others 
only vegetable food. The meat-eating female rat ran 



MEAT EATING INSUFFICIENT 101 

5,447 miles, while in the same time her vegetable- 
eating sister ran 447. The meat-eating male rat ran 
1,447 miles, while the vegetarian ran only 200 miles. 
But this condition of high pressure in the vital pro- 
cesses is functional excitement not true invigoration. 
To be stimulated is not to be strengthened and re- 
created. Look at the larger animals. The panther 
paces wildly, while the elephant, camel and horse in 
reposeful strength plod along unexcitedly and when 
put to work endure as no other animal endures. 

An editorial in one of the New York papers 
commented with mild sarcasm on this rat incident as 
follows : 

"While we have not made such striking experi- 
ments, we have noticed these facts ourselves in our 
observation of the animal kingdom. Take the case 
of the poor elephant. He does not taste meat in his 
whole life, being reduced to such miserable fare as 
shrubs, the tops of bushes and little trees, and other 
such food lacking in nutrition. As a result the ele- 
phant seldom attains a weight of more than 10,000 
pounds, and the hardiest specimens do not often live 
longer than 200 years. 

"The rhinoceros, which also has a thin diet much 
like the elephant's, is notably of poor physique. He 
is perhaps not more than twenty times as heavy as 
the meat-eating leopard. His brother the hippo- 
potamus, which grubs around the edges of rivers, 
is noted for his slim and delicate figure. There, too, 
is the feeble camel which does not have meat on its 
bill of fare. It is so lacking in endurance that it 
cannot pass more than a couple of weeks in the 
desert without water. No specimen of our Alaskan 
moose weighing more than 2,500 pounds has yet 
been found. 



102 STARVING AMERICA 

"We might cite many other instances, but we 
do not think that Professor Stonacker's theory needs 
any more." 

A word as to the digestion of meats, which begun 
in the stomach is completed in the intestines. One- 
fourth of all the blood in the human organism is 
in the liver performing its works day and night. 
One of the duties of the liver is to elaborate the 
bile. Between two and three pounds of this fluid are 
secreted by the liver every twenty-four hours. This 
vital fluid aids in the absorption of fats and checks 
putrid fermentation. It acts as a natural stimulant 
of the intestinal mucous membrane. The biliary 
acids are powerful antiseptics. When the bile, 
through digestive disorders, passes into the stomach 
it interferes with gastric digestion. When the or- 
gans are in normal action it assists in preparing the 
partially digested food that passes from the stomach 
into the action of the intestinal juices, thereby fitting 
it for assimilation into the living organism. 

It excretes many of the poisonous decomposition 
products from the body and if interfered with, these 
decomposition products accumulate and by auto-in- 
toxication sicken or kill. 

Too much meat or too much nitrogenous food of 
any kind, peas, beans, lentils, cheese, eggs, nuts, re- 
quire the liver to produce a great quantity of bile 
in order to work them out of the system. 

Most people consume as much energy in getting 
rid of worthless food as they do in a hard day's 
labor. 



CHAPTER XIL 

WHAT WE SHOULD EAT — REAL FOOD. 

Millions do not know the taste of meat and when 
it is known that the vital salts, potassium and phos- 
phorus with negligible traces of iron and calcium, 
constitute the meagre contribution of meat to the 
twelve indispensable salts which the body needs, 
there is abundant reason for not overestimating the 
value of meat. Many of the races of the world 
scarcely ever eat meat. 

The chief food of the Japanese consists of rice, 
pulse, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, squashes, egg 
plants, peas, beans, radishes, oranges, peaches, pears, 
apricots, plums, persimmons, raspberries, bulberries, 
currants and herbs which they dress in so many dif- 
ferent ways. 

Are not the Japanese robust, well made, active, 
healthy, long lived, intelligent? Compare the mor- 
tality records of their army with the records of the 
Russians whom they defeated. 

The Greeks eat black bread made of unbolted rye 
or unbolted wheat meal. With a bunch of grapes, 
a handful of raisins or figs, this diet keeps the Greek 
laborers astonishingly athletic and powerful. 

The Turks and the people of Malta eat black 
bread and coarse macaroni supplemented with gar- 
den stuff and Sicilian wine, goat's milk, cheese, fish, 
raisins, ripe olives and other fruits, thistle broth, 
boiled thistle stalks, dandelion and vegetables. 



104 STARVING AMERICA 

The diet of the Chinese is practically without 
meat. 

The Russian laborers, millions of them, eat black 
bread with a bunch of garlic, supplemented with 
cabbages, mushrooms, vegetables and milk. Those 
who can afford it have boiled millet pudding, goat's 
cheese, onions, cake made of unbolted Indian corn, 
vegetable soup, ''black broth" and weak tea. 

The Norwegians eat rice, bread, milk, cheese, 
hasty-pudding, porridge of oat meal or rice meal 
seasoned with herrings or mackerel. 

The Spanish peasant eats unpolished rice, brown 
bread, grapes, raw onions and drinks light wine. 

The French peasant eats dried beans and peas, 
potatoes, boiled rice, milk, greens, pancake made of 
wheat meal and eggs, salads, curded milk and little 
wine or meat is consumed except during the time 
of hay making and harv^est. 

The Swiss workman rarely tastes flesh. His 
food is principally brown bread, cheese, potatoes, 
vegetables and fruit with large quantities of milk. 

The Scotch eat oatmeal, oatmeal cakes, potatoes, 
milk, butter, bacon, but little other meat. 

So let the American race possessing the largest 
and most varied supply of food of any race on the 
earth, take that food in its original nutritious state, 
as furnished by the all-wise Creator. 

Let us have unbolted wheat meal containing all 
of the wheat, nothing added, nothing removed, and 
natural brown rice, unbrushed, unscoured, unpol- 
ished, containing all of the rice, nothing added, 
nothing removed. 

Let us have old-fashioned oat meal with the hull 
removed by the old dry process, without steam or 
steam heat. When the oat or any other grain is 
steamed, some of the soluble mineral salts which it 



WHAT WE SHOULD EAT 105 

contains are washed out and carried off. When the 
steam condenses on the surface of the grain and 
trickles off, it carries with it the vital elements which 
it holds in solution. 

Let us have unpearled barley, a beautiful golden 
grain, containing all of the barley, nothing added, 
nothing removed. 

Let us have maize meal and corn meal unbolted, 
ground from the undegerminated corn. 

Let us have wheat food or mixtures of wheat and 
rice or wheat, rice and barley granulated to the same 
degree in which we usually find the demineralized, 
denatured, debased farine and similar so-called 
''breakfast foods." 

Let us have the barley loaves of Biblical tradi- 
tion, the maize loaves of history and the wheaten 
loaves, the rice cakes and the delicious oat cakes of 
centuries ago. 

Let us have wheat muffins of the whole wheat 
meal, and date cakes and fig cakes and raisin and 
prune cakes, the very names of which are no longer 
known to the refined and exhausted dietary of 
modern times. 

What is true of over-indulgence in nitrogenous 
food, flesh, peas, beans, lentils, eggs, cheese, nuts, is 
also true of over-feeding on carbohydrates (sugars 
and starches) . The importance of carbohydrates as- 
food stuff is secondary. They are totally unable 
to take the place of nitrogenous foods. A definite 
amount of these nitrogenous foods is necessary that 
life may be maintained. Starch and sugar do not 
replace nitrogen. White bread and potatoes are 
principally starch. Candy is 95 per cent sugar of 
glucose. White bread, potatoes and sugar are com- 
mon types of the carbohydrates. 



106 STARVING AMERICA 

Potatoes should be alternated with other fresh 
vegetables such as carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets 
and a dish of steamed natural brown rice or un- 
pearled barley should be frequently substituted for 
them. With the potato let there always be some of 
the green vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, 
spinach, brussels sprouts, etc. 

Like all the legumes and grains, the pea, bean 
and lentil contain the mineral salts in different pro- 
portions, one being rich in chlorine, another in phos- 
phorus, another in calcium, etc. 

The lima bean and navy bean and pea and lentil, 
are like meat, rich in nitrogen, but with the mineral 
salts that meat lacks. To cook them, soak them in 
cold water over night for ten hours at least. Use 
only such quantity of water as they will absorb. 
Never throw the excess of water away. It contains 
the tissue salts that are so valuable. The fireless 
cooker affords an ideal method of cooking them and 
they should remain under the action of heat for 
eight or ten hours. 

Beans, peas and lentils contain an average of 
about twenty-five per cent of proteins, nearly two 
per cent of fat and about fifty per cent of carbohy- 
drates, sugar and starch. They are rich in potas- 
sium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesijim and contain 
traces of iron, sulphur, silica, chlorine and sodium. 
Of the total mineral content of these three legumes 
more than one-third is phosphorus and more than 
one-third potassium. As a base for the principal 
meals of the day or as an addition in small quantities 
to the lesser meals, the legumes are valuable, but 
should not make up more than one-fifth of the total 
quantity of food consumed. 

Lentils are nearly three times as rich as peas 
and beans in chlorine and about ten times as rich 



WHAT WE SHOULD EAT 107 

in sodium, but they contain only about one-fourth 
the quantity of magnesium. They possess four times 
as much iron as peas and beans, although only 
traces of sulphur and silica are to be found among 
them, whereas in peas and beans the sulphur is 
considerable and the silica quite noticeable. In 
phosphorus content all three are practically the 
same. 

/ Peas and beans contain a large quantity of potas- 
/sium. By having lentils one day, peas the second 
I day and beans the third day, we vary the meals so 
(as to get just what we need in right proportions. 

*) Combinations of these legumes can be made flavored 

/ with the juice of onions, spinach, cabbage, turnips, 

I parsnips, parsley, celery, etc. 

^^ — Of the cereals, the oat is the richest in minerals, 
barley next and wheat third, closely followed by rye, 
corn and rice. This means the whole grain. In 
processing, polishing, pearling, bolting, etc., the 
grains lose more than 75 per cent of their min- 
eral value. Like beans, peas and lentils, the various 
cereals differ widely in potassium, phosphorus, iron, 
calcium, etc. 

More than half of the mineral content of natural 
brown rice is phosphorus and nearly half of all the 
other cereals with the exception of oats is phos- 
phorus, the latter containing but about one-fourth 
of this element. Whole wheat meal, natural brown 
rice and undegerminated corn are rich in potassium, 
and all about equal in iron. 

Barley contains lime, calcium and only a trace of 
chlorine. The breakfast foods made of the whole 
grains should also be varied so as to balance their 
mineral gifts. 

Among vegetables, spinach is the richest in min- 
eral matter, with cabbage, horse radish, potatoes 



108 STARVING AMERICA 

and lettuce following close behind. After that we 
find carrots, radishes, onions, cauliflower, cucum- 
bers, asparagus, etc. The green vegetables are very 
low in protein and starch with the exception of po- 
tatoes; for this reason they should always accom- 
pany the legumes and cereals. Their chief advan- 
tage apart from their mineral value is in the neces- 
sary bulk they afford to the food. Bulk is required 
in order to stimulate peristaltic action and to prop- 
erly distribute the digested elements so that the pro- 
cesses of assimilation may be carried on gently and 
continuously. 

In cooking the green vegetables, the water in 
which they are cooked should never be thrown away. 
With the addition of whole wheat meal and butter a 
most delicious sauce can be prepared. By saving 
this sauce for the needs of the body instead of for the 
waste pipe of the sink, we prevent anemia or mineral 
starvation. This liquor also makes delicious soup. 

Of the fruits, the dried fig is the richest in min- 
eral matter containing about three times as much of 
the organic salts as any of the other fruits. Next 
to the fig in mineral value is the blueberry and after 
that in close order the strawberry, prune, cherry, 
apple, peach, gooseberry, grape, etc. 

Tlie potassium content of all fruits, with the ex- 
ception of strawberries, is high. Figs, strawberries 
and apples are rich in sodium. The other fruits with 
the exception of the gooseberry, prune and peach 
contain little of this element. The apple contains 
little calcium; all the other fruits contain a large 
quantity of this element. In magnesium there is lit- 
tle difference in the fruits, the fig being richest. The 
strawberry, gooseberry and prune contain most iron, 
the strawberry, however, being twice as rich in iron 
as the prune. 



WHAT WE SHOULD EAT 109 

Inphas^liorus_content all the fruits are about the 
same with the exception of the fig, which contains 
but a trace of this necessary element. In sulphur 
there is little difference, it making about one-eighth 
of the total mineral content of the fruits. The 
strawberry is very rich in silica. Next to it, a close 
second, is the cherry. The other fruits contain a 
small quantity of this element. Those who object to 
whole wheat bread because of its silica content 
should not eat strawberries. The chlorine value of 
fruits is low. 

Nuts are extremely rich in minerals, particularly 
!n phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and calcium. 
The cocoanut contains about six times the quantity 
of chlorine found in any other nut. The chestnut is 
very starchy but contains little fat. The other nuts 
are rich in protein and fat, but contain little starch. 
The cocoanut is also deficient in protein, whereas the 
other nuts contain a high protein content. 

The egg is rich in sodium, calcium, iron, phos- 
phorus and chlorine. It contains nearly twice the 
quantity of mineral matter in cow's milk. 

A man weighing one hundred and sixty pounds, 
possesses in his body about forty-five pounds of car- 
bon, fifteen pounds of hydrogen, ninety pounds of 
oxygen, three and a half pounds of calcium, one and 
a half pounds of phosphorus, one and a half pounds 
of chlorine, three and a half ounces of sulphur, three 
and a half ounces of fluorine, three ounces of potas- 
sium, two and a half ounces of sodium, two ounces 
of magnesium, one and a half ounces of iron, one 
ounce of silica and one half ounce of manganese. If 
we do not consume sufficient organic phosphorus, 
potassium, silica, magnesium, iron, sodium, etc., in 
our food our body draws upon itself to its own de- 
struction for these necessary elements. 



110 STARVING AMERICA 

Children must be taught this fundamental truth 
in order that as they come to maturity they may see 
the necessity for obeying the laws of life in regard to 
their food. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
CANDY, ICE CREAM AND OTHER FOODS. 

In considering molasses, let it be understood with 
a shudder that as now manufactured this popular 
sweet is enfeebling the stamina of the race. Its 
curse rests heavily on the head of the child because 
it is usually consumed with another cursed product, 
bread. 

We must realize that starch, gum, gelatine, glue, 
mucilage, dextrines and sugars, serve as sources of 
energy and fat but are not building materials for the 
tissues of the body. 

When starch, sugar, glucose or molasses are not 
properly combined in the body or are not fully ox- 
idized to carbonic acid and water, as the tissues are 
broken down, they are excreted in the urine, thereby 
manifesting in the system, "diabetes mellitus." 

Cane sugar acts like an acid, corrosively, upon 
iron and steel. It also acts upon lead, taking this 
metal into solution. Confectioners recognize this 
activity of sugar to such an extent that they employ 
copper and tin-plate kettles. 

Containers and faucets containing lead produce 
poison where sugar or molasses comes in contact 
with them. Foil containing lead, used as a wrapper 
by candy makers, also produces poison. 

Like the juice of the maple, the juice of the cane 
contains iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, 
silica, etc. The affinity of sugar for lime is shown 



112 STARVING AMERICA 

in the mineral content of the juice, of which nearly 
one-fifth is calcium oxide. 

We thus see how with any "refined" sugar from 
which the lime and other minerals are driven out 
the sugar takes on an insatiable hunger for lime, 
iron, etc. We are thus able to understand how such 
demineralized sugar attacks the lime and iron of the 
tissues which in turn attack the lime and iron of 
the blood, thereby robbing the body of these indis- 
pensible substances and preparing it for the invasion 
of disease. 

Raw brown sugar and honest molasses free from 
sulphuric acid and sulphurous acid would be a bless- 
ing, not a curse, because they would give to the body 
the tissue salts which they possess and thereby save 
the body from the destructive action of the "refined" 
product. 

Molasses as now prepared has an ugly history, 
which grows out of our national worship of com- 
mercial gods. In the old days the juice of the cane 
was clarified and evaporated in open kettles set di- 
rectly over the fire. To-day it is clarified by the 
use of sulphurous acid which is subsequently 
neutralized by an alkali. In the process the flavor 
and aroma are greatly destroyed by the sulphurous 
taste and odor which remains in the product to in- 
juriously affect the health of the unsuspecting con- 
sumer. 

In some sugar factories the sulphurous acid is 
introduced as gas; in others it is introduced in the 
form of solid acid sulphite of lime. Part of this 
sulphurous acid is oxidized to sulphuric acid. The 
ordinary molasses possesses little of the flavor of the 
old-fashioned open kettle syrup. Instead of the 
old product, we now have "Refined Molasses." One 
method of refinement consists in suspending in 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 113 

water acid sulphite of sodium which is brought into 
contact with zinc dust. 

The solution that results from this process is 
then mixed with the crude molasses. 

Molasses is thus bleached or refined and the 
aroma and flavor which do not escape in the efferve- 
scence which follows the mixing, are bound up under 
the effects of free sulphurous acid. 

Sometimes oxalic acid is employed. There is 
always danger that the resulting "refined molasses'' 
may contain poisonous zinc salts or poisonous oxalic 
acid salts. 

Other methods of bleaching molasses are pro- 
duced by the action of chloride of tin. 

The free sulphurous acid of so-called New Or- 
leans Molasses is liberated when brought into 
contact with the hydro-chloric acid of the gastric 
juice. This would be tolerable under a pagan code 
of morals that gave no value to child-life where the 
prosperity of great industries was concerned. 

Of 18 samples of molasses examined by the 
Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in 1912, 14 
were found to contain the poisonous metal zinc which 
probably was introduced into the molasses in the 
form of a zinc chloride used as a flux for soldering 
the tin cans in which the molasses was sold. 

Of 20 samples analyzed, 18 contained the poison- 
ous salts of tin. All molasses is rich in soluble and 
insoluble mineral salts, but the vicious contamination 
with sulphuric acid and sulphurous acid together 
with traces of zinc and tin makes the modern com- 
mercial production of this splendid food product a 
shameless and unspeakable crime which is justified 
only on the ground that the national health is of less 
importance than the national wealth. 



U4 STARVING AMERICA 

Mention is made on the label of the molasses in 
tin cans that it contains sulphur dioxide. However, 
this does not take the curse off the molasses, the 
molasses taffy, the molasses ginger bread or cookies 
containing it. 

We have gone so far astray under the direction 
of commercial chemistry that nothing but complete 
revolt will check the evil. 

Not even revolt will bring back to the heart of 
little Helen's mother the sunshine that has gone for 
her into the shadows forever. In the meantime the 
extra profit of a penny per quart consoles the con- 
science of the molasses-maker. 

When a State like New York provides for its 
Department of Agriculture only $10,000 a year with 
which to enforce the Pure Food Law and permits its 
legislators to distribute hundreds of thousands as 
additional salary grabs for political henchmen, it 
would seem to be time for an accounting to the 
families doped with food frauds. 

New food laws are needed. Funds are needed for 
their enforcement. Capable chemists and fearless 
inspectors are needed. A commission, free from com- 
mercial taint, for the purpose of establishing food 
standards is needed. An official authority to' deter- 
mine the harmfulness of certain elements now em- 
ployed by food industries, and an official power to 
condemn such elements are needed. 

Candy makers in New York State who use shellac 
in the manufacture of their products, as well as talc 
and sodium sulphite, can defy the department at 
Albany to molest them. Under the law as it stands, 
the candy maker is safe from prosecution. 

The cheap candy factory can be classed as an 
enemy of the public school's efficiency. By its un- 
natural appeal to childhood's most easily misdirected 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 115 

impulse it imposes a heavy handicap upon the work 
of teaching. 

The gravity of this handicap can be measured 
by the public's distorted sense of values in estimating 
the worthiness of this or that foodstuff. Many of 
the worthless food compounds that enjoy the ques- 
tionable honor of "popularity" among children, 
enjoy a deplorably enormous sale. 

One stumbles into cheap candy factories and 
cheap confectionery stores almost as often as he 
passes a saloon or soda water fountain. The cheap 
candy factory helps to keep alive the methods of 
trickery common to the 15th century when the 
Spamards. greedily bartered gaudily colored caps, 
brilliantly tinted glass beads, fantastic hawk's bells 
and other painted trifles for great quantities of cot- 
ton yarn, cassava and small ornaments of gold. 

European avarice soon learned that with such 
colored appeals it could trade successfully for any- 
thing the native possessed. It is the survival of 
this method of color appeal which has developed the 
trade of the cheap candy factory with the modern 
American child to such an alarming magnitude. 
Everywhere the child is confronted with artificially 
colored sweetmeats. It is taught in its most impres- 
sionable years that the greatest appeal is to the eye 
and it soon forms the pernicious habit of judging 
from the surface instead of from the substance. 
Everywhere we hear white-haired wisdom saying: 
"The American public loves to be fooled." 

The maker of penny candies has discovered that 
from the same batch of glucose, often sweetened 
with saccharin, he can produce sixty varieties of 
colored candy with the aid of permissable coal tar 
dyes, to catch the fancy of the passing child. 



116 STARVING AMERICA 

Even when such candies contain nothing less 
v/holesome than glucose or nothing more dangerous 
than saccharin the added color appeal leads its 
youthful victim into the vicious excesses against 
which every family physician so repeatedly cautions 
in vain. 

The law which protects child life from many 
other dangers because of some picturesque touch of 
horror does not consider that this more subtle and 
consequently less perceived danger falls within its 
power. No one in sound mind denies the physical 
menace of the bad, cheap candies containing paraffin, 
carpenter's glue, sulphites, soap-stone, shellac, 
radiator lacquer and coal-tar dyes. 

The most innocent of such ingredients is said to 
be soap-stone, sometimes known as talc, although 
anyone who has seen the keen, splinter-like spicules 
of talc under the microscope must know that they 
have no wholesome function to perform when they 
become imbedded in the delicate mucous membrane 
of the child's intestinal tract. 

Our purpose is not so much to denounce such 
dangerous candy ag to emphasize the influence of 
so-called "innocent" candy in perverting the child's 
processes of judgment and to denounce the unfeel- 
ing industry which lives and prospers through its 
unchallenged system of exploiting the untrained and 
too often unrestrained appetities of boyhood and 
girlhood. 

In the growing years, the penny candy is often 
a substitute for nutritious food, too often impairing 
and destroying the taste for such food. 

How many young men of feeble digestion and 
how many anaemic young women can attribute their 
physical infirmities to a long continued disregard of 
the fundamental laws of nutrition brought about 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 117 

through artificially cultivated taste and warped 
judgment? 

The candy factory with its penny product helps 
to initiate the great vice of food inebriety. 

To disorder the senses from early childhood is 
not a fitting preparation for useful manhood or 
womanhood. Penny candy has much to answer for. 

Glucose at $2.00 per hundred pounds, with the 
aid of coal-tar dyes, becomes candy worth from 
$20.00 to $60.00 per hundred pounds. At the time 
of this writing glucose bleached with sulphurous 
acid, or unbleached, is worth $1.31 per hundred 
weight. 

Is it upon the unrestricted freedom of such profit- 
making trade that we build the soundness of Amer- 
ican youth? Can it be said that candy of this 
description contributes in any manner to the welfare 
of the child? 

It is time, indeed, that the mothers of America 
should formulate laws of their own designed to dis- 
courage the tremendous consumption of debased 
sweets among their children. 

Pineapple, strawberry, raspberry, banana, peach, 
cherry, plum flavorings for candy, pop and soda 
water are false. No chemist, prior to the year 1912, 
has ever succeeded in putting on the market a pure 
fruit extract made of these flavors. No such flavors 
have ever appeared on the market. Science has not 
been able to devise a means of capturing the volatile 
flavors of such fruits. The whole scheme is false, 
deceptive, misleading. 

So-called extract of pineapple used by the candy 
maker and soda fountain is a mixture of chloroform, 
amyl oxide of butyric, aldehyde, butyric ether, citric 
acid, oil of lemon, glycerin and alcohol. This mix- 
ture whose destiny is the human stomach is sold 



118 STARVING AMERICA 

under the Pure Food and Drugs Act in the most 
dignified and thoroughly legal manner. 

The invalid who eats a dish of gelatine or the 
child that drinks a glass of soda water flavored with 
these chemical triumphs looks into a very appetizing 
and apparently very innocent delicacy. 

Strawberry extract is made of nitric ether, acetic 
ether, formic ether, butyric ether, amyl oxide of 
butyric, ground rhatany root and some essential oils 
and alcohol, a legal compound for the child's soft 
drink, for the icing of the fancy cake and for the 
beautifully colored ice cream. There are a few com- 
mercial industries engaged in the manufacture of 
candy, ice cream, soda water, cake, etc., who class- 
ify these drugs according to character and will have 
none of them. Up-to-date, the number is few. 

Raspberry extract is another fascinating cre- 
ation. It is made of nitric ether, aldehyde, acetic 
ether, formic ether, oenanthic ether, benzoic ether, 
etc. Raspberry is popular with the child in sweet 
meats, sweet drinks, sweet cakes and ice cream. 
Perhaps some of the derelicts, who dope themselves 
in later years with morphine, cocaine and similar 
consoling agents have cultivated their abnormal ap- 
petites in their childhood from some of these foreign 
substances which they have been able to secure so 
easily. 

Banana extract, cherry extract, plum extract, 
peach extract, extract of apple and extract of pear 
are made in the same way with the addition of valer- 
ianate ether, valerianate oxide of amyl and acetic 
oxide of amyl. Is it not remarkable that a form of 
government so delicately paternal in its functions 
as to define poisons and prohibit their sales and use, 
should limit its interest to certain chemicals whose 
actions are sudden and radical ? Poisons are poisons 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 119 

whether they kill in a night or in a thousand nights. 
The least dangerous poison is the hurry-up kind 
marked with skull and cross-bones. Such a poison 
warns us and we can keep away from it. 

The most dangerous poisons are the subtler and 
the slower poisons which in time, undermine the 
health and by lowering the vitality permit the in- 
vasion of disease. Disease constantly waits for the 
bars of resistance to be dropped in order that it 
may pounce upon the human body and destroy it. 

The government exercises its functions with re- 
gard to carbolic acid, strychnine, cocaine, opium, etc., 
because they are speedy in their action, but cer- 
tainly the speed of their destructive powers should 
not determine their use or their sale. 

Judge Landis at Freeport, 111., tried a case of 
interstate shipment of misbranded goods. The 
offense had occurred more than a year before and 
the Judge being "satisfied" that the violation of the 
law was "not deliberate," imposed a "nominal" fine 
of "one cent." 

The Solicitor of the Department of Agriculture 
can possibly tell us why the United States Govern- 
ment, which controls the sale of chloroform and 
ether, does not control the sale of flavoring extracts 
made of chloroform and ether. 

Perhaps the best legislators and the best public 
officials are men who are more interested in human- 
ity than in political success. In the meantme the 
question is: "Are we going to do anything about 
it?" 

The Commissioner at Albany and his New York 
assistants have accomplished wonderful results, with 
their limited means, in prosecuting butter frauds 
and olive oil adulterations. But rotten eggs, dirty 
milk, villainous compounds that masquerade as jams 



120 STARVING AMEEICA 

and jellies and catsups and fruit syrups, adulterated 
spices, coffee coated with lead chromoate and Vene- 
tian red, cream thickened with calcium sucrate, 
oysters and fish preserved with borax, baker's cakes 
colored with *'egg color," a coal-tar dye; chocolate 
icing colored with another aniline preparation, egg 
puffs made with gelatine and saponin, old canned 
goods relabeled on the outside and tainted with the 
irritant salts of tin on the inside, synthetic flavoring 
extracts, pickles and mince meat and chow-chow pre- 
served with alum and many other vicious practices 
still flourish because, as a State, New York has not 
opened its eyes to the danger. 

We cannot inform our readers why the Stilwell 
pure food bill of 1911 was ''buried in committee'' 
because we do not know. That question remains 
for the Food and Drugs Commission, appointed by 
Governor Dix, to answer. In due time we may know 
who among New York State's representatives at 
Albany are representing the people and who are 
representing the food corruptors. In the meantime 
we know that one official in a high place openly de- 
fended benzoate of soda because when he eats catsup 
preserved with that drug he finds that "gases which 
have collected in his stomach are released." This 
proves to him, as he declares, that benzoate is harm- 
less, and "in conscience he must spread the truth 
for the benefit of others similarly afflicted !" 

Ice cream has been the subject of some serious 
prosecutions by the Government. To interfere with 
the adulterators the bad ice cream has had to be 
caught on its way from one State into another. The 
products so shipped on which prosecution was based 
were declared to have "consisted in whole or in part 
of a filthy decomposed and putrid animal substance 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 121 

which renders the articles unfit for food." The 
Government proved in these cases that as many as 
500,000,000 bacteria were found in a cubic centi- 
meter, approximately a half teaspoonful of the ice 
cream. The bacteria consisted largely of colon bacilli, 
which abound in human and animal refuse. The 
evidence showed that the ice cream was manufac- 
tured in low, poorly ventilated rooms, that in some 
places the workmen worked in slimy water, and 
that at one plant horses were stabled on the same 
floor on which the ingredients for the ice cream 
were mixed. The formula for the seized ice cream 
called for a chemically treated product of renovated 
butter, skimmed and condensed milk, desiccated or 
broken and frozen eggs, cornstarch, gelatine, syn- 
thetic flavorings and coloring matter. 

The St. Louis, Cincinnati and Chicago seizures 
were particularly filthy, and in their making a ma- 
chine known as a "homogenizer'* wast employed. 
This machine extracts the fat from rancid butter 
and mixes the material from which the ice cream is 
made. With the aid of gelatine such a machine 
will produce a "fluffy" product. There are about 
sixty commercial formulas used in New York by 
ice cream makers. The Government cannot touch 
them. Their adulterations fall under the control 
of the State Department of Agriculture and the 
Health Department. The State does not profess to 
be able to meet the situation and the health authori- 
ties are busy with other things. 

The extensive use of ice cream by children makes 
regulation of this product as imperative as the 
regulation of the milk supply. There is no better 
culture medium than milk and gelatine for the devel- 
opment of pathogenic bacteria, and the importance 



122 STARVING AMERICA 

of crusading against low grade ice cream is a sum- 
mer issue. Much of the bowel trouble reported by 
the local Health Department among children under 
five years of age may have its origin in infected 
frozen dainties. There should be no speculation 
about this matter. What the city demands is safety 
and certainty. 

Dr. Wiley has established standards for ice 
cream. To what extent are these standards followed 
in New York City, where, as far as Dr. Wiley is 
concerned, it is not necessary to follow any stand- 
ards? Who is safeguarding New York's ice cream 
supply? 

If you suppose that sodium benzoate and sodium 
sulphite have no effect on digestion, you can per- 
form a simple experiment at home that will change 
your attitude toward the question of food preserv- 
atives. 

Sodium benzoate needs no description. Its his- 
tory has been written in the most shameless phrases 
ever coined by political and commercial corruption. 
Few, however, know what it is and how it acts as 
a preservative of food products. It is prepared by 
the action of benzoic acid on the metal sodium which 
yields salt, pure white in color and slightly acrid 
to the taste. 

Sodium sulphite, not so well known and usually 
employed by the butcher under the name of '*pre- 
servaline," is prepared by the action of sulphurous 
acid on the metal sodium. The resultant salt re- 
sembles the benzoate salt in color, but has a 
nauseating taste, and, when placed upon the tongue, 
produces a strangling sensation in the throat. 

Grind one pound of lean beef in a meat chopper. 
Divide it into three equal parts. Mix with each part 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 123 

about 20 per cent of finely chopped pineapple. The 
juice of the pineapple is a solvent of flesh and in 
the quantity mentioned will perfectly digest beef 
at ordinary atmospheric temperature. Place each 
of the three parts of chopped beef and pineapple in 
three separate vessels. Mark No. 1 as the "control" 
mixture. Set it aside. 

Into mixture No. 2 carefully distribute one-half 
of 1 per cent sodium benzoate. Set it aside. 

To mixture No. 3 add in the same intimate man- 
ner one-half of one per cent sodium sulphite. Set 
it aside. 

At the end of twenty-four hours the beef in vessel 
No. 1, containing no preservative, will be mottled 
brown and gray in color and perfectly digested. The 
living enzymes of digestion have done their work. 
In fact, only a pulp will remain. This pulp, digested 
with pineapple juice, is the predigested meat pre- 
pared for the physician's prescription. 

The beef in vessel No. 2 will be salmon pink in 
color. The sodium benzoate has arrested the action 
of the pineapple juice. It is an enemy of digestion. 
It suspends the laws of nature. It kills the digestive 
enzymes. It keeps the tomb sweet. The Egyptians 
knew this. Their mummies were preserved with 
benzoic acid. 

The beef in vessel No. 3 will be a brilliant red, 
such as you see in the window of a butcher shop, 
where a platter of hamburger steak or a string of 
frankfurters is displayed. Like the benzoate it has 
prevented digestion. Outside the stomach these 
drugs, in such common use, have an inhibiting effect 
on digestion. What is their conduct inside? Why 
are they used ? Why are so many of the people ap- 
parently so indifferent to their action? 



124 STARVING AMERICA 

What is the remedy? Politics? No. Chicanery 
and abuse of a devoted public servant? No. En- 
forcement of the law and prison for the offender? 
Yes. 

The custom of "sweating" coffee to give it the 
appearance of green coffee properly aged is ques- 
tionable. Green coffee improves with age before it 
IS subjected to the roasting process, on which it de- 
pends largely for its agreeable flavor and aroma. It 
is probably true tnat there is nothing in the practice 
of this coffee trick which might be considered 
deleterious. 

But to give inferior grades of coffee a coating 
of lead chromate is only to deceive the trade into 
mistaking a poor quality of coffee for a superior 
one. The practice of painting coffee with Venetian 
red is a pernicious sham which should be punished 
by law. 

Oil of cinnamon, oil of cloves, oil of mustard, oil 
of cassia, etc., are extensively employed in the arts. 
Spices are robbed of their fixed and volatile oils to 
supply this demand. As a result low grade and 
exhausted spice, little better than so much wood 
fibre, is sold to the people. In addition to these 
spice frauds, ''tailing" and ''siftings," dirt and waste, 
are mixed with pepper, cinnamon, cloves, etc., and 
the public is duped with misleading labels and so- 
called cheap packages that are practically worthless. 
The dull gray substance often sold as white pepper 
is a bleached product worth about one-fourth the 
price paid for it. True white pepper is creamy 
white. It is rare. 

Olives known to the trade as "culls" and "sec- 
onds" are packed in the same bottle with prime 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 125 

fruit, a^nd the bargain finds its way sometimes to 
the discriminating table. 

There is no such thing as "full cream cheese." 
The best types of cheese sold as cream cheese are 
made of whole milk artificially colored with coal-tar 
dye. It is said that people will not eat white cheese, 
the natural product. Skim milk cheese is the rule. 
It has been robbed of its valuable butter fats and 
is not so nutritious or digestible or palatable as 
whole milk cheese, but it is largely manufactured as 
a substitute for the honest product. Lard is used as 
a filler, and barium sulphate, a heavy mineral, is 
employed to give weight. 

Caramels are manufactured from the "swells" 
of the condensed milk industry. These "swells" are 
spoiled by the generation of gas-producing bacteria. 
They are as unfit for food as the tomato pulp, so 
largely employed in the making of tomato soup, 
catsup and chili sauce by the unscrupulous manu- 
facturer. The heat to which these bacteria are sub- 
jected in the caramel-making kills the bacteria but 
has no effect on the end-products of the bacteria. 
Those end-products have no good part to play in 
the body of a living child. 

In certain quarters there has been bitter criticism 
of those who expose the secrets of the food industry. 
Such secrets ought not to exist. They have become 
part of the permanent records of the Department of 
Agriculture and have found their way into prac- 
tically all of the annual reports of the various State 
chemists. That they have not had larger publicity is 
due to the fact that the "Notices of Judgment" do 
not usually find their way into newspaper offices. 

The attack on Dr. Wiley has stimulated interest 
in the crimes of the food world, and in many quarters 



126 STARVING AMERICA 

the overzealous food fakers are now looked upon as 
commercial suicides who by their own folly have 
hastened the end of their criminal practices. 

Special Agent Harry P. Cassidy, of the Penn- 
sylvania State Dairy and Food Department, in the 
month of August, 1910, began action against a 
wholesale confectioner of Philadelphia charging him 
with selling candy containing sulphur dioxide or 
sulphurous acid. Samples of the wholesaler's candy 
relishes and other penny specialties had been an- 
alyzed by Professor Charles H. La Wall, Chemist for 
the State Dairy and Food Commission, and were 
found to contain sulphurous acid. 

It must be remembered that all New Orleans 
molasses contains sulphurous acid and it is impos- 
sible to make candy free from sulphurous acid from 
such molasses. 

The case against the wholesaler had hardly got 
started when the National Candy Manufacturers' 
Association, represented in almost every large city 
throughout the United States, obtained a temporary 
injunction in the United States District Court, re- 
straining Cassidy from going ahead with the prose- 
cution. After two months, the court, refusing a 
permanent injunction, dissolved its prior order. 

Cassidy then brought the candy manufacturer to 
trial in Common Pleas Court where the jury brought 
in a verdict of guilty. Judge Martin then upset the 
verdict and the case was started on its way to the 
higher courts. Cassidy was being hampered in every 
way by legal technicalities and delays in establish- 
ing the right of the State of Pennsylvania to prohibit 
the sale of poisoned candy, but he did not falter. 

Finally Judge Henderson of the Superior Court, 
declaring that "no one has a natural or a constitu- 



CANDY, ICE CREAM, ETC. 127 

tional right to put poison in confectionery or other 
foods" imposed a sentence of guilty which was im- 
mediately appealed. 

The case was then taken to the Supreme Court 
and in a decision rendered in April, 1912, after al- 
most two years of fighting against the spirit of 
darkness, the highest court in the State of Pennsyl- 
vania upheld the opinion of the Superior Court 
striking a blow at Pennsylvania candy manufac- 
turers who use sulphurous acid or any other poison 
in their products. 

Unscrupulous candy manufacturers in the State 
of Pennsylvania cannot now take refuge behind the 
contention that a law which safeguards the health 
of the public is unconstitutional when it trespasses 
against property rights or interferes with business. 
ffy Something happens every day to make people 
realize the gravity of the odds under which they 
live, but they continue to go along as before, unmind- 
ful of the evil things around them which by their 
unite.d-and intelligent action they can destroy. 

But in the meantime charges were brought 
against Cassidy and he was dismissed from the serv- 
ice of the state. The governor of Pennsylvania was 
brought into the case, gave Cassidy the hearing de- 
manded, was forced to vindicate him, just as Dr. 
Wiley was vindicated, but Cassidy was not restored 
to office. 

Both Wiley and Cassidy are "out" and now in 
Pennsylvania, having learned the lesson, no of- 
ficial will dare go after the big cases. Look for loose 
enforcement of the law in Pennsylvania. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A RAID ON IMPURE FOODS. 

In the city of Worcester, Mass., on the evening 
of March 21, 1912, there was a Domestic Science and 
Pure Food Exposition in Mechanic's Hall, conducted 
by Retail Grocers' and Provision Dealers' Associa- 
tion and the Worcester Women's Club with a mem- 
bership of six hundred. 

There were forty-six exhibits, many of them 
giving samples to the visitors, and a laboratory in 
charge of Lewis B. Allyn, Professor of Chemistry 
and Physics in the Massachusetts State Normal 
School. 

Three of the young lady students of the West- 
field School were demonstrating to the housewives 
methods by which adulteration can be detected in 
food products. 

Downstairs in Washburn Hall a lecture was given 
by the writer, telling something of the crimes record- 
ed in this volume. But the audience listened quietly. 
They do not believe that such things are going on 
in Worcester. 

Little impression was made upon the citizens of 
Worcester. But the next morning, March 22nd, two 
men planned an excursion through the drug stores, 
bake shops and grocery shops of the city. 

Easter confectionery is purchased consisting of 
candy eggs, licorice pellets, "baked beans," Easter 
rabbits, Easter chicks, candy marbles, chocolate 
creams, fourteen different varieties of sweet meats. 



130 STARVING AMERICA 

Strawberry soda water, orangeade, lime juice and 
Sauterne wine are purchased. 

Next, chili sauce, sour pickles, canned mush- 
rooms, dried apples, dried apricots, onion salad, 
lemon pie, mince pie, raspberry turnovers, egg puffs, 
orange cake, lemon extract, vanilla extract, prepared 
mustard, brussels sprouts, maraschino cherries are 
added to the list. 

Cough syrups, consumption cures, seven different 
soothing syrups and teething syrups, kidney pills, 
headache cures are bought. They are all taken to 
the laboratory and analyzed. 

The Easter eggs are made of stearic acid, car- 
penter's glue, glucose, coal-tar dye and soap-stone. 

The licorice pellets are made of lamp black, car- 
penter's glue and glucose. 

The "baked beans" are coated with shellac. 

The Easter rabbits and marshmallows are made 
of carpenter's glue, glucose, coal-tar dyes and 
ethereal flavors. 

The Easter chicks are made of carpenter's glue, 
glucose, coal-tar dyes and ethereal flavorings. 

The candy marbles are made of coal-tar dye, glu- 
cose, ethereal flavoring and soap stone. 

One-half of one of the little yellow chicks pur- 
chased for a penny gives up enough carpenter's glue 
to bind two boards five inches wide and nine inches 
long together. 

The lime juice contains sulphurous acid. 

The, canned mushrooms contain sulphurous acid. 

The dried apples and dried apricots contain sul- 
phurous acid. 

The Sauterne wine contains sulphurous acid. 

The strawberry soda water contains coal-tar dye, 
benzoate of soda and ethereal flavor. 

The orangeade contains coal-tar dye. 



A RAID ON IMPURE FOODS 131 

One of the thirst quenchers contains caffeine. 

The onion salad contains one-tenth of one per 
cent benzoate of soda, two-tenths of one per cent 
aluminum sulphate and one-tenth of one per cent 
saccharin. Food drugs get lonely sometimes and 
travel in battalions. 

The maraschino cherries are bleached with sul- 
phurous acid, dyed with analine and preserved with 
benezoate of soda. 

The sour pickles contain aluminum sulphate. 

The lemon pie contains glycerine, glucose, oil of 
lemon, starch, coal-tar dye and benzoate of soda. 
The pie filler from which it is made came to the 
baker in a barrel. The barrel is properly labeled. 
The pie is not labeled. The mince pie contains ben- 
zoate of soda. The mince meat from which it is 
made is properly labeled. The pie is not labeled. 
The raspberry turnovers contain coal-tar dye and 
benzoate of soda. 

The cough syrup is labeled "contains no chloro- 
form, ether or morphine — a purely vegetable com- 
pound." At the bottom of the label appear the 
words: "Alcohol 21/2%, Tincture of Poppy 21/8-" 
That cough syrup says nothing about laudanum. The 
innocent phrase "vegetable" or "purely vegetable" 
means nothing. Strychnine, morphine, laudanum 
are "purely vegetable." 

The soothing syrups and teething syrups are 
found to contain morphine, morphine sulphate, mor- 
phine hydrochloride, chloral hydrate, cannabis 
indica and chloroform. 

The consumption cure is found to contain alcohol 
and chloroform; headache cures contain acetanilid, 
antipyrin, acetphenetidin ; the kidney pills contain 
an illegal coal-tar dye, methylene blue so concen- 



132 STARVING AMERICA 

trated that one pill gives a blue tint to one hundred 
gallons of water. 

These damnable things are going to go ! ! ! 

The lemon extract is found to be misbranded, 
sold under the name of a chemical laboratory that 
has no existence. The vanilla extract is a compound 
made of vanillin and coumarin, not of vanilla beans. 

The molasses contains sulphur dioxide, and the 
brussels sprouts, sulphate of copper. 

Another day a big bake shop is visited. Its man- 
ager has read the report of the lecture of the night 
before in the "Morning Telegram." He is panic- 
stricken and does not refuse an inspection of his 
plant. The tubs and barrels in the rear are plainly 
marked ^'artificially colored, artificially flavored, 
preserved with benzoate, etc." He promises that 
these supplies will be thrown out of his shop. 

Another bake shop is visited; in the rear room 
where the baking is done dirty workers are seen. 
A copper kettle is boiling over a coal fire. In the 
kettle is a sugar sauce. Flecks of dirt are being 
skimmed from the surface of the mass. The ashes 
raked out on the floor are piled high around the 
stove. A coating of grease and filth is found on the 
woodwork of the room to the depth of one-eighth of 
an inch. Artificial colors, egg powders, compounds, 
dyes, fillers, etc., abound. 

The Worcester ''Evening Gazette" carries two 
columns reporting the exposures. The Saturday 
"Morning Telegram" on its front page carries a 
three column head line. 

The members of the Worcester Woman's Club 
and their aroused friends met in Washburn Hall 
Saturday night, March 24th and present for open 
discussion resolutions calling upon President Taft 
to reinstate Doctor Wiley. 



A RAID ON IMPURE FOODS 133 

The resentment of the city as expressed through 
its organized womanhood is white hot. Every man 
and woman present, with the exception of one, en- 
dorses the resolution. One man rises to his feet 
and protests. He is a wealthy citizen of Worcester, 
the proprietor of a patent medicine. After the 
meeting he comes upstairs to the laboratory followed 
by the crowd. He is challenged in the open and 
asked to explain why he voted against Dr. Wiley. He 
is informed that the borax industry, the blended 
whiskey industry, the dried fruit industry, the 
drugged pickle industry, the rice industry, the white 
flour industry, the molasses industry, the preserving 
industry, the mince meat industry, the manufac- 
turers of saccharin and its users, the manufacturers 
of sulphites and the users of this drug, the manu- 
facturers of food dyes and their users, the manu- 
facturers of alum and its users, the manufacturers 
of bleached glucose and the leather industries that 
use glucose as a filler, the importers of opium, mor- 
phine, cocaine and their users, the users of nostrums, 
containing habit-forming drugs, the patent medicine 
industry, the benzoate of soda industry are against 
Doctor Wiley, against uncompromised purity of food 
products, against food reform. 

He is informed that 150,000 ounces of cocaine are 
used in patent medicines in the United States every 
year; that large quantities of acetanilid, acetphene- 
tidin, antipyrin, phenacetin, caffeine, chloral hydrate, 
codein, dionin, heroin are consumed annually; that 
tons of opium are used every year in preparing 
patent medicines; that there are more than a hun- 
dred sanitariums in the United States advertising 
treatment for drug-addiction; that many hundreds 
of cases of drug addiction are treated annually by 
physicians in private practice and in hospitals ; that 



134 STARVING AMERICA 

there are more than thirty so-called mail order drug 
addiction cures on the market and that the manager 
of one of these treatments has openly confessed that 
his company has 100,000 names of drug-addicts upon 
its books. 

He is informed that in the year 1910 in the 
United States infants under one year of age to the 
number of 154,373 died; that the total number of 
deaths of children under ten years of age in the 
same year was 235,262 ; that in the year 1910 there 
were officially recorded at Washington, D. C, a total 
of 804,512 deaths. 

He is informed that Doctor Wiley never claimed 
that he did not make mistakes, but that where there 
was a question of corporate interests on one hand 
^nd human health on the other. Doctor Wiley's atti- 
tude was always uncompromising, and that, there- 
fore, Doctor Wiley made enemies; that the things 
then discovered in Worcester are the things against 
which Wiley has been devoting twenty-nine years 
of his active life. 

He is informed that the Bureau of Chemistry 
with Doctor Wiley at its head spent $1,190,784 in 
preparing evidence against food frauds, not one of 
which frauds was permitted by Dr. Wiley's superiors 
to be reported to the Federal courts for prosecution, 
and that it cost the government $515 to gather evi- 
dence in the Bureau of Chemistry for every one of 
the 6,206 suppressed cases that were kept out of 
the hands of the public prosecutor through influence 
higher-up. 

He is told that Doctor Wiley was accused of 
crimes by his associates in office and that the Attor- 
ney General of the United States recommended that 
"condign punishment" should be visited upon him, 
and that an investigation compelled President 



A RAID ON IMPURE FOODS 135 

Taft, in spite of the Doctor's enemies-, to vindicate 
him sweepingly. 

«He is informed that Doctor Wiley's misdeeds, so 
deserving of "condign punishment" were not mis- 
deeds at all, were laudable efforts to preserve the 
health of the people against the food and drug 
crimes which are committed in all places just as 
in the city of Worcester. 

A child's Easter hat is held up, brilliantly trim- 
med. The straw was bleached with sulphurous acid. 
The scarlet ribbon bows were colored with the coal- 
tar dye extracted from the strawberry soda; the 
blue rosette received its happy hue from the coal- 
tar dye extracted from a kidney pill ; the lavender 
buds were colored with coal-tar dye extracted from 
the Easter confectionery, and the Maraschino cher- 
ries which added a delightful touch of brilliant color 
to this piece of millinery perfection, contained three 
drugs, sulphur dioxide, analine and benzoate. It 
was a pure food hat ! 

A breathless crowd surrounds Doctor Garst to 
listen to his answer. In a trembling voice he speaks 
to the crowd. "I admit Doctor Wiley has done a 
great, good work and is deserving of all honor. I am 
in sympathy with everythng that has been revealed 
here to-night and I have stood in this room for an 
hour listening to the exposures that have been made. 
I admire Doctor Wiley because he has been fighting 
these things and the reason I voted against him 
downstairs is because there was nobody present to 
defend the doctor's enemies." 

Worcester is awake at last. Is it to be alone? 



CHAPTER XV. 

FOOD ADULTERATIONSo 

To show that these conditions exist generally, 
we quote from a report by John Phillips Street, 
Chemist of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment 
Station, of the results secured in his laboratory dur- 
ng the past four years. All food examinations under 
the law in Connecticut are made in Mr. Street's 
laboratory at the State Experiment Station. The 
station, however, has no power to prosecute and only 
reports its findings to the proper officials and then, 
if prosecution follows, furnishes expert testimony in 
court. 

In Interstate cases when the dealer produces a 
properly signed guaranty the case is taken out of 
the hands of the state official and turned over to the 
Department at Washington. That department sup- 
pressed many thousand cases that were never again 
heard of by the public. "Business," not the health 
of the people, was the motive. 

Mr. Street says: "The following summary 
shows the results of our examinations in Connecti- 
cut in the past four years, remembering that these 
figures apply to foods only, not drugs, and that under 
the heading, "adulterated" are included misbrand- 
ing, below standard and other violations of the law. 



138 STARVING AMERICA 

Not found 

Adulter- Adulter- 

Year. ated. ated. Compound. Total. 

1908 639 228 100 967 

1909 682 262 85 1,029 

1910 641 262 54 959 

1911 389 479 70 938 

Total 2,351 1,233 309 3,893 

"The above tabulation does not include 24 sam- 
ples of infant and invalid foods, 37 of ice cream and 
11 of canned peas, for which we have no standards 
in this state. The amount of adulteration in the peas 
was very high, 56 containing glucose, 77 cane sugar, 
14 copper, 88 tin, and 16 "soaked" peas. The table 
shows that during the four years 3,893 samples of 
food were examined, only 60.4 per cent of which 
were pure. The 51 samples of sausage and the 452 of 
molasses included in the above were not examined 
for chemical preservatives. Such an examination 
would doubtless have still further reduced the purity 
percentage. 

"The following tabulation gives in detail our 
findings with the different classes of foods examined 
during the four years : 

Not found Adulter- Com- 
Adulterated. ated. pound. 

Breakfast Foods 36 14 

Butter 86 172 24 

Cider 2 4 * 

Chocolate and Cocoa 43 45 23 

Coffee 29 1 

Condensed Milk 33 4 

Cream 49 6 ' 6 

Cream of Tartar 4 

Dessert Preparations 2 1 14 



FOOD ADULTERATIONS 139 

Not found Adulter- Corn- 
Adulterated, ated. pound. 

Diabetic Foods 11 10 

Flavoring Extracts 132 161 61 

Fruit Colors and Flavors 8 3 1 

Fruit Juices 19 9 17 

Gelatin 10 6 

Ice Cream Cones 22 6 

Ice Cream Powders 1 

Jams, Jellies and Preserves . . 14 8 67 

Ketchup 5 54 19 

Lard 97 12 

Maple Syrup 8 . . 23 

Meat Extracts and Juices 13 39 

Milk 295 346 

Mince Meat 17 1 1 

*Molasses 452 2 

Olive Oil 125 10 

Paprika 12 2 1 

Pickles 15 5 15 

Relishes 2 2 8 

Salad Dressings 9 1 2 

Root Beer Extracts 11 1 

Salt 18 .. 3 

Sardines 43 1 

Sauces 23 5 3 

fSausage 26 25 

Soda Water and Soda Water 

Syrups * 6 42 2 

Soft Drinks 7 2 

Soups 21 

Starches 29 

Spices 82 13 

Vinegar 534 220 14 

Total 2,351 1,233 309 

Percentage 60.4 31.7 7.9 

* Examined only for glucose. 
fExamined only for starch. 



140 STARVING AMERICA 

'*[ have classified the different kinds of adultera- 
tion detected in my work in this state during the 
past four years. Many of these are of course harm- 
less adulterants. This list includes only actual 
adulterants and does not cover misbranded or sub- 
standard samples, nor does it include skimmed milk, 
watered milk, dilute alcohol and deficient oil in flav- 
oring extracts, sulphites in sausage and molasses, 
or any vinegar adulterants. 

*The following non-chemical adulterants were 
found the number of times indicated: 40 apple 
stock, 1 living beetle, 11 beef stearin, 1 Bombay 
mace, 1 brown sugar, 126 cane sugar, 3 capsicum, 
54 caramel, 1 cayenne, 2 coffee hulls, 2 corn starch, 
13 cotton seed oil, 1 exhausted ginger, 117 glucose, 1 
Iioney, 1 molasses, 178 oleomargarine or renovated 
butter, 3 olive oil, 1 olive stones, 1 rice product, 4 
sand, 16 soaked peas, 45 starch, 19 tumeric and 2 
wheat products, or 644 in all. 

The following chemicals were found the times 
stated : 

Alcohol .* 13 

Alum 39 

Benzoic Acid 173 

Boric Acid 4 

Caffeine 1 

Calcium carbonate 1 

Calcium phosphate 1 

Calcium sulphate 1 

Coumarin 40 

Coal-tar colors 189 

Copper sulphate 14 

Formaldehyde 5 

Glycerine 5 

Hydrocyanic acid 2 

Magnesium carbonate 1 



FOOD ADULTERATIONS 141, 

Nitrobenzol 1 

Phosphoric acid 1 1 

Potassium nitrate 11 

Saccharin 38 

Salicylic acid 6 

Sodium phosphate 1 

Sucrate of lime 8 

Sulphurous acid 5 

Synthetic flavors 67 

Tartaric acid 3 

Tin 89 

Wood alcohol 2 

Total 721 

'^Certainly the above figures do not indicate that 
chemicals are of rare occurrence in foods. Twenty- 
seven different chemicals were found 721 times in 
about 3,900 samples of food. It is also of interest 
to note the distribution of these chemicals among 
the different kinds of foods. Alcohol was found in 
soft drinks, fruit syrups, cider and meat extracts; 
alum in pickles and relishes; benzoic acid in jams, 
jellies, preserves, chili sauce, pickles, soft drinks, 
catsup, mince meat, fruit syrups, lime juice, orange- 
ade, lemon juice, root beer extracts, relishes and * 
soda water; boric acid in ice cream cones and salad 
dressing ; caffeine in soft drinks ; calcium carbonate, 
phosphate and sulphate in salt; coal-tar colors in 
jams, jellies, preserves, jelly powders, lemon, pepper- 
mint, orange, pineapple, raspberry, strawberry and 
wintergreen extracts, catsup, orangeade, fruit 
syrups, ice cream cones, ice cream powders, salad 
dressings and soda water ; copper sulphate in canned 
peas; coumarin in vanilla extract; formaldehyde in 
milk; glycerine in flavoring extracts; hydrocyanic 



142 STARVING AMERICA 

acid in almond extract; magnesium carbonate in 
salt; nitrobenzol in almond extract; phosphoric acid 
in jams; potassum nitrate in meat extracts; sac- 
charin in jams, jellies, pickles, soft drinks, catsup, 
relishes, Worcestershire sauce and soda water; 
salicylic acid in meat extracts and strawberry syrup ; 
sodium phosphate in salt ; sulphurous acid in mince 
meat and lime juice; sucrate of lime in cream; syn- 
thetic flavors in jelly powders; flavoring extracts, 
ice cream powders and soda water; tartaric acid in 
jams and jellies; tin in preserves and canned peas; 
wood alcohol in lemon extract." 

If one state in this Union can present the above 
unfortunate array of facts, what might not all the 
States show?" 

But there are still other ways to rob foods of the 
value which nature intended they should possess. 

Nowhere is man's foolish interference with 
nature more evident than in his thoughtless destruc- 
tion of one of nature's oldest gifts to the human 
race — ^the olive. 

We do not pluck the unripe grape, the green 
peach, the green strawberry or any other green 
fruit and then "cure" it by chemical treatment in 
order to destroy the ferments with which nature 
endowed it, thereby preventing the glorious trans- 
formation which the processes of ripening bring 
about according to nature's fixed law to every im- 
mature thing of earth. 

But man arrests the development of the olive, 
stunts its beauty and destroys its virtue. The 
beautiful purple fruit of the southern hills is not 
permitted to ripen as nature would have it do. It 
is plucked green and tossed to chemistry to be made 
a curse to the race it was destined to serve. 



FOOD ADULTERATIONS 143 

To-day the ripe olive is despised and in its lus- 
cious, nutritious stead, the crisp, green thing of an 
evil art rolls across the Atlantic in thousands of 
puncheons to add its part *to the tragedy of food. 

Man converts thousands of acres of golden corn 
into glucose, using in the manufacture hydrochloric 
acid to produce the syrup desired. 

Man converts thousands of acres of barley and 
rice into beer and millions of pounds of grapes into 
fermented wine. The natural sugar of the fruit and 
its precious mineral salts are destroyed by the pro- 
cess. In their helpful stead, man substitutes thou- 
sands of gallons of alcohol, the initial cost of which 
is but a few cents per gallon, but with revenue tax, 
transportation charges, rectifiers' and blenders' 
profit, bonded warehouse charge, liquor dealers' 
profit, advertising expense, this alcohol reaches him 
at a cost from $4.00 to $8.00 per gallon. 

No, we cannot attempt here to cover the entire 
field of food adulteration and debasement. This 
effort to prove that food and food preparation are 
the most important stones in the foundation of a 
strong and enduring nation, will rest when it has 
aroused the boards of trade, health departments and 
legislators all over the country. 

To show the manner in which the benzoate of soda 
users misuse the law's permission to employ this 
chemical in their food products, the following cases 
are quoted from the report of the State Chemist, 
Department of Agriculture, Georgia, issued Septem- 
ber, 1912 : 

"Squire-Dingee Company, Chicago, 111." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1 of 1% ben- 
zoate of soda," was found to contain .30 of 1% ben- 
zoate of soda and declared "illegal." 



144 STARVING AMERICA 

"S. J. Van Hill Company, Baltimore, Md." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1 of 1% benzoate 
of soda," was found to contain .36%, nearly four 
times as much as declared. "Illegal." 

**Gast, Crofts and Company, Louisville, Ky." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1 of 1% benzoate 
of soda," was found to contain .39%. "Illegal." 
"Kentucky Canning Company, Owensboro, Ky." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1 of 1% benzoate 
of soda," was found to contain .38%. "Illegal." 
"Jobber-Bishop & Company, New York." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .2%. "Illegal." 
"Jones Brothers & Company, Lousville , Ky." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .35%, "Illegal." 
"Beach Lake Canning Company, Cuthbert, Ga." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .28%. "Illegal." 
"Knadler & Lucas, Louisville, Ky." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .22%. "Illegal." 
"Hort-Catto Manufacturing Co., Detroit, Mich." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .28%. "Illegal." 
"J. Weller Company, Cincinnati, Ohio." 
Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .22% benzoate of soda. 
"Illegal." 
"Curtiss Brothers Company, Rochester, N. Y." 
Blue Label Catsup — ^Was declared illegal, because 
it was found to contain .2% benzoate of soda. 
"Libbey-McNeil & Libby." 
Catsup — ^Was found illegal, because it contained 
.26% benzoate of soda. 

"Charles L. Hersch & Co., New York." 



FOOD ADULTERATIONS 145 

Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .40% benzoate of soda. 
"Illegal." 

"Williams Brothers Company, Detroit, Mich." 

Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .22%. "Illegal." 
"E. G. Daily & Company, Detroit, Mich." 

Catsup — Labelled to contain ".1% benzoate of 
soda," was found to contain .40%. "Illegal." 

These official findings indicate that the food 
manufacturer, who avails himself of the law's per- 
mission to use one-tenth of 1% benzoate of soda, or 
any other per cent, provided he truthfully declares 
the per cent on the label of his product, only too 
frequently disregards the law, and uses benzoate of 
soda in quantities ranging from twice to four times 
as much as the label indicates. 

The above facts are taken from serial No. 56, 
compiled by J. J. Conner, Commissioner of Agricul- 
ture of the State of Georgia. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FOOD PRESERVATIVES. 

All the Sauteme wines and sweet white wine, all 
New Orleans and Porto Rico molasses, all artificial 
Sultana raisins, all California "silver" prunes, all 
California dried apricots, dried peaches and dried 
pears, all dried apples with the exception of sun- 
dried apples plainly marked as such, most canned 
mushrooms and considerable canned asparagus are 
bleached and preserved with sulphurous acid. Other 
foods such as Maraschino cherries, gelatine, jelly 
powders and "export" glucose also contain sulphur- 
ous acid. 

On July 13th, 1907, five years ago, the authorities 
at Washington declared that pending investigation 
of the effect of sulphurous acid upon the health of 
the people, the Department of Agriculture would 
institute no action against the manufacturers of 
foods and drinks who employed sulphurous acid as 
a bleaching agent and preservative. 

Sulphurous acid is still legal and is being con- 
sumed in hundreds of tons of foods and drinks rep- 
resenting the industries of many states. 

On October 2nd, 1911, Doctor J. C. Olsen, Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry of the Polytechnic Institute, 
Brooklyn, said at Madison Square Garden, New York 
City, that he had introduced sulphurous acid into 
the food of dogs and watched them closely for six 
months. At first they actually appeared to fatten on 
it and it was thought that all the cry against sul- 



148 STARVING AMERICA 

phurous acid would be proved to be without founda- 
tion. 

Then the animals were chloroformed and cut 
open. Apparently all their organs were sound and 
healthy and as far as the naked eye was concerned 
sulphurous acid had not harmed them. Before a 
jury with only such surface evidence sulphurous acid 
would be white-washed and the experiments on dogs 
would be considered conclusive. 

But Dr. Olsen was thorough. He placed the 
dogs' kidneys under the microscope. In every in- 
stance the results were the same. The lens revealed 
the degeneration of the kidney cells. They had 
broken down. Sulphurous acid was found to be 
deadly to the kidneys of dogs. 

Scientists do not yet know to what extent sul- 
phurous acid combines with the organic minerals of 
the fruits of which it becomes artificially a part, or 
how far it changes the nature of the mineral salts. 

Yet they find that it produces injurious effects on 
the human organs. 

Dr. Wiley, after his clinical experiments in the 
Bureau of Chemistry, denounced the use of sulphur- 
ous acid as an ingredient of foods and proved by 
medical and pathological data that it produces 
serious injury to digestion and health. His findings 
were reported in Circular No. 37 issued by the De- 
partment of Agriculture, November 22nd, 1907. 
That circular stated plainly: 

"The administration of sulphurous acid in 
the food produces serious disturbances of the 
metabolic functions. It adds an immense bur- 
den to the kidneys which cannot result in 
anything but injury. It impoverishes the blood 
in respect to the number of red and white cor- 



FOOD PRESERVATIVES 149 

puscles therein, and the administration of a 
substance which diminishes these important 
component particles of the blood is in every 
sense highly prejudicial to health." 

The fruit growers of California demand its use. 
Under its action dried fruit takes up as much as 
twelve or fifteen per cent of moisture and this mois- 
ture is sold to the fruit packers at fruit prices. The 
fruit packers then redip the fruit in a solution of hot 
glucose and water, thereby adding more weight or 
filler to their products. This necessitates another 
treatment with sulphurous acid in order to make the 
fruit marketable. So the people pay for moisture 
when they buy fruit! And glucose as a filler finds 
its way into a hundred foods. 

This is why there is opposition between the 
national health on one hand and the fruit, molasses 
and wine interests on the other, and hence, govern- 
ment reluctance to decide between them. 

It is possible to obtain unbleached molasses. The 
molasses known as **Barbadoes" is free from sul- 
phurous acid. 

It is possible to obtain sun-dried fruits. Demand 
them. 

Your demand will accomplish quickly what the 
law for five years has not accomplished. 

In the meantime no one may say to what degree 
sulphurous acid has contributed its part to the mak- 
ing of those mortality records at Washington which 
include Death's annual harvest of 235,262 children. 

Five years ago, July 13, 1907, Doctor Frederick 
L. Dunlap and Solicitor George P. McCabe declared 
in Food Inspection Decision No. 76: 

"It is the opinion of the Board that copper sul- 
phate is injurious and should be prohibited event- 



150 STARVING AMERICA 

ually, but it would work a great injury to American 
importers to put this ruling into effect at once. It 
is believed that the use of copper sulphate or of 
other salts of copper in restricted quantities for 
greening vegetables should be permitted for the pack 
of the present year, but for no longer." 

Five years have past and sulphate of copper re- 
mains one of the food drugs which are legal. As 
in the decision which permitted the use of sulphur- 
ous acid, Dr. Wiley in this case did not sign the 
circular permitting manufacturers to use the drug. 

In three states — North Carolina, Pennsylvania 
and Texas — ^the health authorities have condemned 
copper salts as an ingredient of canned fruits and 
vegetables, and those States have responded by enact- 
ing laws that forbid the sale of any article of food 
contaminated with copper. 

Does the housewife know that nearly all the 
string beans, lima beans, brussels sprouts and peas 
imported into the United States from France are 
artificially colored—discolored is the correct word — 
with sulphate of copper? The American canner does 
not use this drug at all and to this extent deserves 
great praise. It is a curious situation. The Federal 
pure food laws permit the importation of coppered 
canned goods, though Pennsylvania, North Caro- 
lina and Texas declare that copper salts are poison- 
ous and refuse to permit any traffic in them in those 
States, under penalty of the law. 

The French themselves will not eat the canned 
vegetables which they treat with copper for our 
use. The dealers plead that the public demands food 
made attractive by chemical manipulation. So the 
manufacturers make their strongest appeal to the 
eye. Next they consider the sense of smell, then 



FOOD PRESERVATIVES 151 

the sense of taste, and last the question of nutritive 
value. The folly of this practice is obvious. 

The public wants what looks like the greatest and 
most attractive value for its money. In reality 
that value is nutritive value. 

Coloring by copper salts is a fraud. It deceives 
the consumer by influencing him to mistake an arti- 
ficial and dangerous characteristic as an indication 
of superior merit. In the "Revue Scientifique," 
Klopine reports that certain cells of the human or- 
ganism have a selective action on green, and that this 
coloring substance is absorbed by the cells until 
they break down and die. This process goes on con- 
tinually when an individual habitually uses food that 
has been artificially colored. 

In New York the admirable Stilwell bill, in the 
nineteen hundred and eleven session at Albany, pro- 
vided for the banishment of copper salts and all 
other forms of chemical treatment, but the bill was 
killed as the "food industries" must not suffer 
through such a trifling issue as "pure food !" 

If in the opinion of the Board of Food and Drug 
Inspection, sulphate of copper is injurious and should 
be prohibited eventually, why should the Board of 
Food and Drugs Inspection add that to prohibit it 
at once would work a great injury to American im- 
porters ? 

Is the business of American importers of more 
moment than the health of the American people? 

[Editor's Note: Since the above was written a 
decision has appeared forbidding the importation 
after Jan. 1, 1913, of any foods containing this 
poison, but it does not forbid the sale of the $1,000,- 
000 worth of these coppered foods which New York 
importers got into the country during the last three 
months of 1912.] 



152 STARVING AMERICA 

Alum is an astringent. It hardens vegetable and 
animal tissue. Pickles so soft that they can be 
squeezed through the hand like tooth paste from its 
tube can be made by alum's use firm enough to sell. 
Piccalilli, chow-chow, condiments, baking powder, 
baker's "compounds," mince meat, etc., are put into 
a "healthy" condition by allopathic doses of alum. 

Like all preservatives and drugs of its kind it 
destroys ferments. We have seen how digestion de- 
pends upon the activity of ferments. We can easily 
understand that alum and other food drugs do not 
assist these ferments to perform their duties. Is 
alum's effect upon the mucous membrane of the 
intestines anything like its effect upon the membrane 
of the pickle? 

Fruits and berries delayed on the railroad, 
softened and discolored by decay, are not "waste- 
products" in the estimation of the unscrupulous jam 
and jelly maker. With the aid of glucose and ben- 
zoate of soda they make a compound which juvenile 
taste persists in demanding through its inheritance 
of the traditions of grandmother's jam closet. 

Such a compound is a dark, syrupy substance, 
unsightly and uninviting. A legal coal-tar dye can 
give it the brightness necessary to catch the eye. 
It pays a handsome profit to the man who makes it 
and to the grocer who sells it, but it also discourages 
the honest product on which the profit is smaller. 

Apart from all considerations of health, the 
tendency of the time is thus hurried toward sub- 
stitution and fraud. Artificial color and benzoate 
of soda are symbols of this degradation. 

Cheap tomato catsup and chili sauce also explain 
the food manufacturer's cherished regard for benzo- 
ate. Many of these catsups are made from tomato 
pulp which the government has repeatedly con- 



FOOD PRESERVATIVES 153 

demned because it is found to contain millions of 
bacteria to the cubic centimeter. Ninety million 
such bacteria have been found in a half teaspoonful. 

Tomato pulp is a waste product prepared from 
the skins and cores and sweepings of the canning 
factory. In its partly decomposed state it is scraped 
from the floor and put into kegs with the food man- 
ufacturer's pet antiseptic. It then goes into storage 
to be called upon as needed in the making of our 
cheap condiments. The government characterizes 
such tomato pulp as consisting in whole or in part 
of a filthy and decomposed vegetable substance. It 
is made fit for food by the introduction of the sacred 
one-tenth of one per cent of benzoate of soda. 

We need not consider the harmfulness of ben- 
zoate. We might admit that it is harmless, although 
the experiments which Floyd W. Robison, Chief 
Chemist of the State of Michigan performed on 
kittens with benzoate revealed the fact that kittens 
that got benzoate in their milk, died. Robison as a 
result of his findings against benzoate was dimissed 
from the government service by Secretary Wilson 
*'for the good of the service." There was no other 
cause, no charge against him. 

Dr. Daniel R. Lucas has prepared a remarkable 
paper on benzoate. He shows under what conditions 
it does become a poison. 

Anyway benzoate has a bad history; it encour- 
ages fraud; it justifies cheapness rather than hon- 
esty. 

The housewife should read the label on her can 
or package and then examine the quality of the 
product. The absence of fine print on the label may 
be an indication that the food is ''pure," but is no 
indication that it is of good quality. 



154 STARVING AMERICA 

For instance, in the case of canned California 
fruits, the purity of the fruit is probably unques- 
tionable, but in some quarters in the trade seven 
different grades are recognized and in other quarters 
nine different grades are found. 

The grade may be "double extra," "extra," "extra 
standard," "standard," "fancy seconds," "seconds," 
"culls," "watered" or "pie fruit." Each grade is a 
step downward, but the lowest and most miserable 
product is just as "pure" as the finest. 

It is the same way with com, tomatoes, peas, etc. 
The latter may be anything from the finest "Early 
June Sifted" to "soaked" peas which are simply 
dried peas soaked soft and canned so that the canner 
may have the pleasure of selling the ignorant house- 
wife a metal can containing dried peas and water. 

The question of "quality" is introduced merely 
to illustrate the necessity of scrutinizing the char- 
acteristics of our food with as much interest as we 
inspect the reflection of our faces in the looking 
glass. What we see there, in the purely physical 
matter of healthy charm, is a result of the food we 
eat. Let us not fret over the signs of decay if we 
are unwilling to trace that decay to its source in our 
food supply. 

Listen to these phrases on a label on a can in 
the butcher shop : 

"The ideal preservative for chopped meat, ham- 
burger steak, ribs, loins, cuts of meat, quarters of 
beef, veal, mutton, poultry and pork sausage." 

"In use since eighteen hundred eighty-seven." 
"For curing, corning and pickling; for bolognas, 
frankfurters, etc." 

"Sprinkle the preservative over the meat before 
or while being chopped." 



FOOD PRESERVATIVES 155 

These are among the phrases with which the can 
of "Preservaline" is labeled. The lid of the can 
is perforated like a salt shaker. You will find it 
under the counter of many a butcher shop. The 
butcher who uses it will admit without compunction 
that the "dose of sulphites" is used extensively by 
handlers of meat and meat products. 

The rich red color which the white powder im- 
parts to meat is "the most profitable service ever 
offered to the meat trade." The label declares that 
it is "used everywhere by the progressive butcher" 
and is "absolutely indispensable to the sausage 
maker." 

The factory in Brooklyn that manufactures this 
stuff is a big factory and it turns out enormous 
quantities every day. Where does it go? 

The other word for "preservaline" is sulphites. 
As much as you can lift on the tip of a pen knife 
will cause you to strangle if placed on the tongue. 
It is found in marshmallows as well as in sausage 
and hamburger steaks, for, while it makes ham- 
burger steaks red, it makes marshmallows white. 

Scientists employed by food industries say that 
it may form a relatively harmless compound with 
the sugars, proteins and cellulose which are pres- 
ent in food. 

The government, in Food Inspection Decision 
Seventy-Six, stated: "Probably all of these *com- 
bined' forms are not equally inert from a physiolog- 
ical point of view," and in the next paragraph the 
government adds: "but it is necessary to limit its 
presence in such cases so as to avoid the presence 
of excessive quantities of free sulphurous acid, the 
poisonous effect of which is marked." 

In the same Food Inspection Decision, Number 
Seventy-Six, the government said: "However, the 



156 STARVING AMERICA 

pack of nineteen hundred and seven is now under 
way, some of it is complete, and sodium benzoate 
has been used extensively. By another year the 
manufacturers of these food products will have had 
ample time to adjust manufacturing conditions in 
such a manner that the use of sodium benzoate will 
be unnecessary. The prohibition of the use of so- 
dium benzoate at this time would, it is thought, work 
a hardship upon the manufacturers of food products 
out of all proportion to the benefit which would be 
derived by the people. The use of sodium benzoate 
for the time being in limited quantities, which are 
to be plainly stated upon the label, seems to be a 
fair solution both for the people and for the man- 
ufacturer." 

The government used the words "by another 
year" and also "for the time," but five years have 
passed and benzoate is still used. And so the people 
of the country continue to enjoy the blessing of 
these added "harmless" ingredients in their food. 

On the thirteenth of July, nineteen hundred and 
seven, the government issued in Section V of Food 
Inspection Decision Seventy-Six a list of dyes per- 
mitted "pending further investigation." 

"Pending further investigation" sounds well and 
hopeful but the list of dyes, the use of which is 
granted in foods and foodstuffs "pending further 
investigation" is to-day as it was then. 

RED SHADES: 
107 Amranth. 
56 Ponceau 3R. 
517 Erythrosin, 

ORANGE SHADES: 
85 Orange 1. 

YELLOW SHADES: 

4 Naphthol Yellow S. 



FOOD PRESERVATIVES l5t 

GREEN SHADES: 

435 Light Green S. F. Yellowish. 

BLUE SHADES: 

692 Indigo Disulfoacid. 

The decision further states that these coal-tar 
dyes must be made specifically for use in foods, and 
must bear a guarantee from the manufacturer that 
they are free from arsenic and that they represent 
the actual coal-tar compound whose name they bear. 

The dye may be the same dye used in coloring 
feathers, wearing apparel, tapestry, rugs, etc., but 
when used for cakes, ice cream, candy, etc., it must 
be made "specifically for use in cakes, ice cream, 
candy, etc." and not for rugs or ribbons. 

Crown Glossine, with chocolate flavor and harm- 
less color was found by the Bureau of Chemistry to 
contain arsenic. It is used by the candy maker and 
its final resting place is the stomach of the child. 

In a Circuit Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York, upon a plea of 
guilty, the manufacturers of Crown Glossine were 
fined two hundred dollars. 

"Specially Denatured Grain Alcohol Brown 
Glaze" is a confectioner's shellac employed in the 
manufacture of penny candies. Because it contained 
the poisonous wood alcohol which causes blindness 
or death, the courts imposed upon its makers a fine 
of fifty dollars and costs. 

These two cases are recorded under Notices of 
Judgment, Number Nine Hundred Sixty-Four and 
Nine Hundred Seventy-two issued at Washington, 
D. C, July fifteenth, nineteen hundred and eleven. 

When greed impels a criminal to kill and rob his 
victim the crime is picturesque, and punishment is 
usually commensurate with the excitement which 
such a crime inspires. When greed impels a food 



158 STARVING AMERICA 

maker to trifle with poisons and preservatives and 
dyes, and to disregard the laws of life and death 
in his reach for profit, the picturesque element is 
not present. The crime is slow in action. The com- 
mon food does not affright the soul or fill the mind 
with dread. Debased foods, particularly ice creams, 
soft drinks, cakes and candy, belong largely to the 
children's world — and parents think that children 
are prone to bowel disorders anyhow. 

The sick child suggests no mystery; its upset 
stomach is to be expected. The illness i^ taken as 
a matter of course. Hence, the necessity of caution 
is not even suggested. Though a particularly heinous 
food-crime is committed its story rarely gets out of 
the court room. 

There, fifty dollars settles the affair! 

There are now about Two Thousand Notices of 
Judgment, but they have not been read by the 
people. 

The instances just quoted are but a few out of 
hundreds. 

Many persons do not realize that the "condign 
punishment" intrigue against Wiley was a blow 
aimed at pure food and drugs, aimed at the home, 
aimed at the health and happiness of the people. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

BACTERIA IN FOOD. 

Metchnikoff complained that we know really lit- 
tle about death and that, although death has a pre- 
ponderating place in religions, philosophy, literature 
and folklore, scientific works pay little attention to 
it. 

When Tolstoi approached the problem and 
searched for some solution in the writings of scien- 
tific men, he found the explanations so trivial and 
inexact that he grew impatient, then enraged. 

Metchnikoff himself did not say that he had 
found the secret of life or death. He did arouse 
scientific men. We now realize that in the brilliant 
achievement of scientists one tremendous field has 
been unexplored. 

Biologists have learned much with and without 
the microscope. Astronomers have traced the 
heavens with the telescope and now at Cambridge, 
Harvard astronomers have completed a photographic 
map of the entire sky showing about 1,500,000 stars. 

Chemists have learned much with the test-tube. 
We have many volumes on radio-activity, X-Rays, 
violet rays and the scalpel. We have entire libraries 
devoted to therapeutics. We have probed deep into 
the secrets of nature, yet, our scientific men have 
not taught the plain people how to eat and live. 

A plant should apparently die when all its organic 
forces have been exhausted. In some plants parts of 



160 STARVING AMERICA 

the plant, such as the flowers, die periodically, al- 
though the plant itself is not exhausted. 

Little Helen's father noticed that among the ger- 
aniums which the child had planted some of the 
flowers were withering while others were still 
blooming. The death of those withered flowers 
could not be attributed to the exhaustion of the 
plant when that plant continued to produce new 
flowers, even while the old ones were dying. 

Metchnikoff, studying these geraniums, threw a 
wonderful light on the ferments and bacteria that 
abound in life, vegetable or animal, and revealed 
certain specific truths that now interest us in the 
loss of good ferments and in the development of bad 
ferments. 

Bad bacteria in milk and milk products, in eggs 
and eggs products, in such things as **rots and 
spots" which have received a clean bill of health 
under the "expert" testimony of scientists before 
the courts and which the wholesale baker's supply 
houses can, therefore, continue to sell to the pro- 
ducer of sponge cake, pound cake, vanilla wafers, 
ice cream, etc., are not to be ignored. 

Bacteria of the bad kind in tomato pulp, catsup, 
chili sauce, fruit products, milk products and gela- 
tine products have no good work to perform. 

Fifty years ago it was not known that all fer- 
mentation was due to the action of microscopic 
plants. 

It had been discovered that under certain con- 
ditions fermentation ceased much more quickly than 
under other?. In transforming sugar to lactic acid 
it was found that it was useful to add chalk ; other- 
wise fermentation stopped before the greater part 
of the sugar had been acted upon. 



BACTERIA IN FOOD 161 

Then in 1857 Pasteur discovered the lactic acid 
ferment or bacteria. Pasteur showed that that little 
micro-organism which can produce lactic acid was 
killed by the very acid it produced. 

In order to help it to live and carry on its work 
it was necessary to neutralize the excess acid which 
it produced by adding calcium carbonate to the 
solution in which it was growing. 

After the lactic bacteria produce a certain quan- 
tity of lactic acid, they are automatically killed by 
their own activities. The end-product of fire is 
ash. In many instances the end-product of bacteria 
is poison. The bacteria are red lights, not always 
dangerous in themselves, but by their presence they 
reveal the presence of other things that are dan- 
gerous. 

In milk the lactic acid bacteria are killed by auto- 
intoxication. They poison themselves by their own 
activity. We know that in milk the death of the 
bacteria takes place at a time when the milk still 
contains enough sugar for the nutrition of the bac- 
teria, and, therefore, we know that the bacteria do 
not die as the result of exhaustion or as the result 
of a lack of food. 

We also know that other bacteria act in the same 
way. The bacteria that produce butyric acid are 
also destroyed by the acid they produce. 

Yeast bacteria which produce alcohol are de- 
stroyed by the alcohol they produce, and as soon 
as a certain limit of alcoholic strength has been 
reached the yeast dies. When the yeast bacteria are 
put to work in such a medium as eggs, rich in nitro- 
gen and poor in sugar, the yeast lives on the nitro- 
genous materials and produces salts of ammonia. 
These salts cause the death of the yeast bacteria, 
again by auto-intoxication. 



162 STARVING AMERICA 

After these facts had been demonstrated, Met- 
chnikoff asked himself : 

"If the lower plants (ferments and bacteria) die 
as the result of poisons produced by their own ac- 
tivity under certain conditions, do not the higher 
plants, such as the geranium, and higher animals, 
such as man, also produce poisons which are fatal 
to them?" 

Our answer is : The animal that lives on normal 
food has the power within itself to control during 
its normal span of life the development and disposi- 
tion of the waste products, or end-products, or 
poison products, which would sicken it or kill it if 
not controlled. When the conditions under which 
the animal lives are made abnormal, its powers of 
self -protection are correspondingly impaired; it 
loses its capacity to neutralize the destroying end- 
products of its own activity; it sickens or dies of 
auto-intoxication like the geranium. 

One who lives on meat has to neutralize the waste 
products found in the flesh of the animal at the hour 
of its slaughter, in addition to neutralizing the waste 
products continually generating in his own body, 
thereby imposing upon his organs of elimination a 
double task while sustaining them with imperfect 
food. 

When a tomato rots the process of decomposition 
by which it rots produces an end-product. When an 
egg rots it produces an end-product. These end- 
products are fatal to life. Any drug that permits us 
to make use of them, enables us not only to intro- 
duce the drug into the food of man but also to intro- 
duce bacterial poisons into that food. Anything that 
interferes with the activity of good bacteria or that 
enables bad bacteria to overdevelop in the body of 



BACTERIA IN FOOT) 163 

an animal cannot have a good effect upon that 
animal. 

We believe we have clearly shovm that it is dan- 
gerous to denature or exhaust our food products by 
removing from them a vast number of vitalizing 
and controlling substances. 

What scientist will say that nature's supply of 
mineral salts performs no function in preventing 
auto-intoxication by the poisonous end-products of 
life's processes ? What scientist will say we do well 
when we tamper with our wheat and rice and barley 
and corn? 

We believe we have shown that it is not only 
risky business but bad business to introduce into 
our foods other substances the conduct of which we 
can not explain to jury or judge. 

Jury or judge can consider the figures tabulated 
at the beginning of these considerations. 

Human intelligence can draw its own conclusions. 

Shall we continue to gratify our eyes with 
unnatural color demands? Shall we continue to 
titillate our palates with artificial food creations and 
food refinement or — shall we continue to bury our 
children? 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

LABELS. 

The menace of the food adulterators against the 
health of the nation will not end as long as money 
is to be made out of cheap adulterations or as long 
as people do not read and heed the fine print on food 
labels. 

Why should honest food require a statement in 
small type printed along the border of its label 
where it is not likely to be noticed? 

Foods that have been trifled with and shipped 
out of one state into another are obliged under the 
law to be labelled. But they are marked with incon- 
spicuous phrases that have no meaning for the aver- 
age consumer. These phrases are : 

"A compound." 

"Contains aluminum sulphate." 

"Contains alum." 

"Contains sulphur dioxide." 

"Contains benzoate of sode." 

"Contains S0^" 

"Artificially flavored." 

"Artificially colored." 

"Contains sulphate of copper." 

Etc., etc. 
J In Pennsylvania it is not legal to sell mush- 
rooms bleached with sulphurous acid, and in North 
Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas it is not legal to 
sell peas colored with sulphate of copper. 



166 STARVING AMERICA 

In all the other states of the union these foods 
and the hundred other foods containing chemical 
elements are served every day without argument or 
objection in the restaurants, hotels, boarding houses 
and homes of the people. 

The packing case in which they are shipped from 
the manufacturer to the hotel keeper is plainly 
marked according to the law, but the individual dish 
served to the guest of the hotel shows no label. 

The law makes you buy an individual drinking 
cup for a penny if you drink in the department 
stores or railway trains, but permits you to drink 
in the cafes, saloons and theatres from the glass 
that touches all lips, clean or foul. 

We might take things into our own hands and 
insist when we go into the restaurant or hotel upon 
seeing the labels that were on the cans and bottles 
and cartons in which the foodstuffs were trans- 
ported. If we made such a clamor we would be con- 
spicuous, of course, but if we all did it, no one of us 
would be more conspicuous than the other. Thus 
by our own action we could discourage this debased 
food industry. 

We have grasped an idea of the marvelously com- 
plex character of the organism we call the human 
body and we want to know henceforth what we are 
putting into that body. 

Of what use is it for the law to require the candy 
manufacturer to inform the candy dealer that the 
penny candies sold to the children of the streets 
contain coal-tar dyes or artificial flavors made from 
oenanthic ether, valerianate ether, butyric ether, 
benzoic ether, acetic ether, formic ether, aldehydes, 
esters and chloroform? We do not know that the 
individual penny's worth taken from the legally 
labeled box contains these things. 



LABELS 167 

The baker buys a tub of "process butter" made 
from reworked rancid butter and the tub is marked 
'"renovated." He buys a tub of "compound" and it 
is so labeled He buys "chocolate color" for his 
icings which contains no chocolate. He buys "whip- 
it-up" for his egg effects and ''egg color" for his 
cakes, and alum for his doughnuts and baking pow- 
der. He buys ethereal mixtures for his fruit flavors 
and a "synthetic compound" for his vanilla extract. 

He buys preserved "fillers" for his pies and cakes. 

He buys stiffening agents and substitutes for 
paraffin that will hold his ice cream firm for forty 
minutes in a temperature of eighty-five degrees. 

All these things are properly labeled v/hen they 
reach the baker. But layer cakes, his fancy cakes, 
his ice creams and his sweet-meats are not labeled. 
The little girls who make their purchases, and the 
mothers of these little girls have no means of know- 
ing the ingredients of the things they buy and not 
knowing they do not suspect. 

To what extent will egg color, whip-it-up, choc- 
olate color, binding and stiffening agents, coal-tar 
dyes, ethereal flavors, fillers, facings, glazes, shellac, 
lacquer, compounds, bleaching solutions, liquid 
smoke, preservatives, etc., etc., nourish a nerve, 
build a bone, make a muscle or contribute to the 
life-sustaining power of the blood? These things 
are used by the bakers extensively and legally. 

Wiley for years tried to have such abuses cor- 
rected but the "label interests" have successfully 
opposed the idea that we need better label laws. 

The soda fountain serves synthetic fruit flavors, 
preservatives, artificial colors, stimulants and heart 
depressors, caffeine and acetanilid. They are all 
labeled on the original bottle, but the child that 
stands at the marble counter has no knowledge of 



168 STARVING AMERICA 

the facts, although the proprietor of the soda foun- 
tain buys his materials from the manufacturer 
properly labeled. 

If the label will tell us what we want to know 
let us cultivate a habit of looking at the label. 

Let us find out why it is not politically neces- 
sary to change it. 

Politics, like the signatures of chemists, cannot 
change those mortality records at Washington and 
in the background of our agitation for simple, hon- 
est, decent label laws, rise the spirits of a million 
little children gone from our homes. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE "POISON SQUAD." 

"Poison Squads" are organized at regular inter- 
vals and healthy young men submit themselves to a 
diet of adulterated food in the interests of science. 

After a period of five or six weeks the usual 
results are announced, frequently to the effect that 
the members of the squad "suffered no noticeable 
inconvenience and experienced no injury." 

This report then appears in thousands of news- 
papers and quiets the public mind, disarms anxiety 
and suspicion. Sometimes it causes the cautious 
housewife to forget the necessity of watchfulness 
in selecting her kitchen supplies. 

These "poison squads" never fight it out to the 
finish. The brave youths who are fed with doses 
of benzoate, borax, copper sulphate, sulphur dioxide, 
aluminum sulphate and the legal coal-tar dyes never 
take all of these delectable substances at any one 
time nor in any one test. 

The "squad" is always confined to one drug, not 
tasting any other drug during its scientific experi- 
ment. Then before there is time for the subtle, slow- 
moving, insidious chemical to affect serious harm, 
the squad is disbanded and the food adulterator has 
been given "proof" that the cry against preserva- 
tives, food chemicals and mineral dyes is a bugaboo. 

Now all the people in the world are not healthy 
young men, and all of them do not stop eating at the 
end of a test lasting five or six weeks. Some of them 



170 STARVING AMERICA 

are babies, some are school children, some are 
nursing mothers, some are about to become mothers 
and some have reached the age when natural vigor 
is no longer sufficiently active to resist even tem- 
porary abuse. 

In fact, we have organized "poison squads" 
among little children and we do not disband those 
squads until the children die. 

Every time the law makes the use of a food 
drug legal or every time it winks at an abuse that 
denatures a food, it makes a permanent "poison 
squad" of the whole country, not for a few experi- 
mental weeks, but for the life time of the individual. 
All the little children of the country, whether their 
parents realize it or not, are now in that "poison 
squad." When the food-drugger puts his dose into 
his product and sends it forth, he does not know 
into whose hands it will fall nor the physical condi- 
tion of the individual who will receive his medicated 
wares. 

We have already turned the whole country into 
a test-tube with respect to the drugs v/e have noticed 
here and though it is not realized it is none the less 
an abomination. You are now in the national poison 
squad. Little Helen and her 200,000 companions 
have been graduated. 

Concerning the national "poison squad" this 
much is certain. Murders are being committed 
through ignorance and selfishness in supplying unfit 
food for the human family. 

As life was given for some good purpose life's 
efficiency should not be lessened by those who ex- 
ploit the needs of life, particularly the natural food- 
stuffs upon which life depends. 

Of the 250 infants that die before they are one 
year old out of every thousand born, and of the 



THE ^TOISON SQUAD'' 171 

countless score of adults that die before their time, 
many lives could be saved if the food manufacturer 
could be made to realize the responsibility he takes 
upon himself when he assumes that it is his right 
to feed the nation with no other object before him 
than the profit to himself. All murders are not pic- 
turesque. The slow-moving, subtle, insidious, under- 
mining of the health of man, woman or child is 
murder. 

Individuals have no right to debase food products, 
the natural result of which is to bring about de- 
generation, ill health, and perhaps death, to those 
who depend upon impoverished foods. 

Self -slaughter is given the widest possible pub- 
licity. The subtle slaughtering of the race is given 
no publicity, but is passed by without notice, be- 
cause the nation neither knows the facts nor realizes 
their results. 

To hide the truth by refusing it publicity is to be 
guilty of whatever murder is involved in robbing 
the people's foodstuffs of the elements necessary to 
sustain life. 

If life is sacred everything upon which life de- 
pends is sacred and the juggling, refining or denatur- 
ing of man's food supply is sacrilege. 

We are asking that the schools and colleges 
should teach the relative viciousness and baseness of 
crime so that public opinion may proclaim that mob 
murders and self-murders are the most cowardly and 
least defensible of all offenses. Let us also demand 
that they teach with their anatomy and hygiene the 
meaning of the presence of proteins, carbohydrates, 
fats and minerals in the diet, so that any commercial 
effort to interfere with these elements for the sake 
of profit may be resented as a crime against the 
sacredness of life. 



172 STARVING AMERICA 

That the destroyers of their own lives are denied 
church burial by three great branches of the Chris- 
tion religion indicates that the idea of the sacredness 
of human life is universal. It adds one more indict- 
ment against public apathy and private greed where 
foodstuffs are concerned. 

If the average man, though a stranger, will 
afford succor to his fellow to prevent a death by 
violence, would he not endeavor to prevent our 
modern food crimes if he realized even remotely the 
enormity of those crimes, as shown in their con- 
sequences ? 

If, at sea, men of wealth and power surrender 
their lives calmly and heroically, while their maid 
servants and the women of the steerage are given 
place in the lifeboats can we on shore not under- 
stand the duty of the living? 

Why should we respond with reverence and tears 
to the acts of brave souls when they serenely yield 
their lives for the public good, and then refuse to 
pick up our own little fragment of public duty lying 
at our feet, because we do not find it gleaming with 
the gold of romance? 

If we honor thousands of noble men and women 
who spend their lives at the hospital bedside to bring 
the sick back again to health, is it not nobler still 
to fight beforehand against preventable disease? 

Are we not all active and responsible agents in 
the great national department of health? 

Who can deny that the hour has come when we 
must, positively and actively, demand honest food? 



CHAPTER XX. 



But you say, if we talk to the cereal dealer or 
the miller about natural breakfast foods and natural 
whole wheat meal and natural corn, etc., he tells us 
that it is impossible to successfully market break- 
fast food or whole wheat meal or any of the other 
grains in their natural state, because they become 
stale and spoil, or, as in the case of natural brown 
rice during the hot germinating months, they are 
subject to weevil infestation. 

The dealer states that when the housekeeper buys 
a stale package or a package containing weevils, she 
forthwith condemns the product as a class, and will 
have nothing more to do with it, henceforth forever. 

But the attitude of the cracker baker, the coffee 
roaster, the egg dealer, the milk man and the bread 
baker, is different toward his equally perishable 
product. These become stale with age, but the dealer 
does not refuse to put them on the market. The 
coffee man sees to it that his roasted coffee reaches 
the housekeeper fresh and fragrant; the cracker 
baker sees that his crackers reach the housekeeper 
fresh and crisp, and the bread man makes arrange- 
ments to have his bread reach the housekeeper while 
it is fresh 

Coffee, bread, eggs and milk are perishable 
products and in consequence, they are prepared as 
needed. 



174 STARVING AMERICA 

Wheat will keep for years, so will barley and 
corn and oats. Rice with a little care will keep in 
the same way. The grains do not spoil until they 
are ground and then they spoil in the hot, germin- 
ating months only. 

The Bureau of Etomology, United States De- 
partment of Agriculture, has gone to some trouble 
to discover the processes, whereby natural brown 
rice might be kept free from weevil infestation. 
It's the old story. Man, in his attempt to improve 
on the wise provisions of mother nature, usually 
meets with failure. 

The scientist is puzzled indeed, when he is 
obliged to begin in the middle, and work both ways 
at once. Science will probably find no means of 
preventing the weevil from attacking natural brown 
rice. Nature has provided the means, and science, 
up to this writing, spurns nature's device. 

In order to protect the rice for us, until we re- 
quire it for our food, nature covers it with a hard 
shell, in which the rice keeps indefinitely. 

Thousands of years ago, Pharaoh took notice of 
this fact, and for the benefit of his people, he stored 
rice in the granaries of Egypt, permitting the 
grain to remain in the shell in which nature had 
placed it. 

Thus the grains were held unwinnowed for 
years, to provide against periods of famine. Weevils 
did not worry the Egyptians, and scientists were not 
required to devise chemical methods of protecting 
the grain, because man instead of defying nature, 
co-operated with her laws. 

Nowadays we winnow the rice in a heap, thereby 
exposing it to the attacks of insects, against which 
nature had protected it with that shell. 



"KEEPING" FOODS 175 

Man builds a shell in the form of a glass bottle, 
or jar, or a tin can, around any animal or vegetable 
product which he wishes to preserve against the 
attack of living organisms. He knows that if he 
takes the shell off his product, by removing it from 
the bottle, jar or can, the laws of nature will operate, 
and destroy his product. 

If we wish uncontaminated oat meal, corn meal, 
wheat meal, barley or rice, we must not prepare a 
year's supply in advance. We must prepare it at 
reasonable intervals, and in harmony with nature's 
laws. 

By grinding more frequently in smaller quanti- 
ties, we may bring them to the people as nature in- 
tended them to be used. 

The mere fact that somebody has invested money 
in a business for profit does not impose upon the 
world an obligation to eat denatured breakfast foods 
and lifeless bread in order that some breakfast food 
concern or miller or baker may declare a larger 
dividend. 

The world wants more energy and ingenuity ap- 
plied to the problem of its needs. It wants that 
problem solved as the coffee man, the cracker man, 
the bread man, the egg man and the milk man have 
solved it. 

If more coffee mills were put to the work of 
grinding v/heat and corn and barley and oats at 
home, it would soon become unnecessary to hunt for 
arguments to induce the miller and the baker to 
change his present methods ! 

With a coffee mill at home and a bag of wheat 
or a bag of oats or a bag of corn we could make 
our own honest meal ; and when we begin to do that 



176 STARVING AMERICA 

simple thing, the great American breaa eater, the 
child of the poor, will have sturdier limbs, rosier 
cheeks, brighter eyes and a happier heart. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE PROCESSION OF LITTLE WHITE CASKETS. 

More than one hundred and fifty-four thousand 
little white caskets going out of the homes of this 
nation in one year ! How might many of those deaths 
have been prevented? 

From the day of birth, and prior to the day of 
birth, children's diseases are brought about — with 
the exception of specific blood poison and the diseases 
that follow in the trail of parental vice — by errors 
in feeding. 

If the child is started right, and this means be- 
ginning before birth, it will possess the vitality 
necessary to resist disease as well as the power 
within itself of appropriating normal food for the 
requirements of its developing body. 

The mother's milk is the ideal food for the child. 
Every mother should make heroic efforts to nurse 
her baby. Many mothers who are normally fit, fail 
to discharge this tremendous obligation to the child 
because they are ignorant of the fact that upon it 
depends largely the child's future. 

Euchres, teas, theatres, club life cannot com- 
pensate for the loss caused by compelling the child 
to depend on artificial sources for its food. 

Infants nursed by healthy mothers are stronger 
than infants nursed on the bottle. Bottle-fed babies 
often look well and normal when compared with 
breast-fed babies, but the future discloses the dif- 
ference. Because a child grows fat on an artificial 



178 STARVING AMERICA 

'diet does not mean that that diet is giving it resis- 
tance to rickets, swollen glands, predisposition to 
disease, etc. 

Cow's milk is not the same as mother's milk. 

Certified cow's milk can be modified to resemble 
physiologically mother's milk but the difference 
is still a menace to the health of the infant. 

If there is doubt about the cleanliness of the 
milk, doubt about its freedom from pathogenic bac- 
teria, it might be pasteurized, but pasteurized milk 
is justifiable for one reason only and that reason 
a doubtful one. It is better, perhaps, to give the 
child tubercle bacilli or other disease-breeding or- 
ganisms after they have been destroyed by pasteur- 
ization than to give them these living organisms in 
raw milk. 

Certified milk costs five cents per quart more 
than the average raw milk. That investment of 
five cents imposes no real hardship on the poorest 
father or mother. In Nev/ York City the most 
wretched and underpaid laborer finds his ten cents 
for whiskey. If he is a father let him rather put 
that money into milk protection for his child. 

Raw cow's milk from healthy animals properly 
certified and fed to the infant at blood heat is essen- 
tial to the well being of the child that knows no in- 
timacy with its mother's breast. 

When milk is pasteurized or subjected to a tem- 
perature above 98^ degrees it undergoes a chemical 
change. Its albuminoids and mineral constituents so 
necessary to the construction of the child's bone, 
tissue and blood become partially disorganized and 
the casseine is toughened. 

Human caseine acted upon by the gastric juice 
of the infant's stomach is reduced to tender flecks 
which readily submit to digestive action. Cow's 



THE LITTLE WHITE CASKETS 179 

milk, even when raw, forms large curds. When 
pasteurized, the curds offer still greater resistance 
to the feeble digestion of the baby. Still, perhaps 
it is better to feed the child pasteurized milk than 
to feed it unclean milk. Pasteurization does not 
work miracles in dirty milk for the reason that 
neither pasteurization nor boiling can kill the decom- 
position products or poisonous end-products of the 
bacteria, although the bacteria that produce these 
poisons are themselve destroyed. 

On artificial diets, including condensed milk, 
containing cane sugar the infant cannot escape con- 
stipation. For this reason fruit juice should be 
given to the baby three or four times a day. The 
freshly pressed, carefully strained juice of oranges 
is the ideal fruit juice for the infant. A teaspoonful 
of such orange juice three times a day is the most 
important addition to the artificially fed baby's 
diet. Never give fruit juice immediately after or 
immediately before feeding. Never use juice from 
fruit containing bruises or green fruit or over-ripe 
fruit. See to it that it is scrupulously strained so 
that none of the fruit pulp is swallowed by the 
infant. Even the child fed from its mother's breast 
is benefited by the fruit juice addition to its food. 
The acid of the fruit almost instantly decomposes 
in the child's stomach and is converted into alka- 
line salts of potassium and calcium. Do not fear 
such "acid" for the child. 

The healthy mother who has not sufficient milk 
for her baby, provided the milk she has be of good 
quality, is not justified in refusing the child what 
little she has. Such human milk is important and 
when supplemented by properly modified cow's milk, 
the infant so fed will enjoy advantages over the 
infant fed entirely on the bottle. If one had a half 



180 '- STARVING AMERICA ^ 

loaf of good bread in the bread box would she throw 
that half loaf away because it was not a whole loaf, 
and substitute in its stead a whole loaf of poor 
bread? The doctor's advice is the advice to follow 
because the responsibility is the doctor's responsi- 
bility. 'He will usually agree with the well-dis- 
posed mother that it is better for her to nurse her 
baby with the milk she has and to make up the 
deficiency artificially than not to nurse her baby at 
all. On a diet of debased food nature will shut off 
the mother's milk supply. The mother who would 
nurse her precious babe must eat food acceptable to 
nature. 

When the child cries he often wants a teaspoonf ul 
of water. He never needs distilled water. Beware 
of distilled water, not only for the child, but for 
the adult. It is mineral-free and mineral-hungry. 
We must not let it feed upon the child. 

Neither infants nor children should have cane 
sugar in their diet, as it is now made, although hon- 
est, old-fashioned cane sugar was a natural and a 
nutritious food. The sugar-bowl on the table 
of the twentieth century home is one of the most 
deadly curses laid by ignorance upon child-life. The 
child's stomach makes its own sugar. Every ounce 
of starch he consumes must be converted into sugar 
before digestion. Mothers of children must be made 
to realize that artificial sweets sap the child's body 
of its most indispensable substances and bring about 
disorder of the bones and teeth. The child's love 
for sweets is to be satisfied with the sweets organized 
for him by all-generous nature plus human intelli- 
gence. He gets these sweets not only in a harmless, 
but in a beneficial form, in the fruits of the earth and 
at two and a half years of age there is not one ripe 
fruit which the child cannot digest and assimilate in 



THE LITTLE WHITE CASKETS 181 

moderate quantities. Even the date will impose no 
tax upon the digestion after the third year unless he 
over-eats. Honey, sap maple syrup and old-fash- 
ioned molasses, with unrefined cane sugar, contain 
the tissue salts of the cane, tree and flower, the iron 
and calcium, that nature put there. Such forms of 
sweets are natural and good. Candy prepared from 
them is good candy for the child. Yes, this advo- 
cates the use of "impure" sugar for there is no such 
thing as pure sugar in nature. The sugar found in 
vegetables, fruits, reeds, trees, etc., is unrefined, 
just as the starch in these things is unrefined. This 
is as it should be, and we should not allow any in- 
dustry, however powerful or privileged, to take any- 
thing out of our food which nature intended to be 
there. Chemically pure sugar, C12 H22 On, is not 
found in nature. It is the product of the laboratory, 
not of God. 

The writer's children eat no artificial sweets. 
They are happy, very, very happy. There is touch- 
ing pathos in their childish efforts to dissuade their 
little companions not to eat the evil or worthless 
things that are everywhere offered them in mistaken 
kindness, or in exchange for their pennies. They 
call the date, apple, orange, berry, banana, fig, prune, 
plum and peach, *'God's candy." They see that no- 
body gives "doggie or kitty or bird or horse or 
chicks" cane sugar. They understand. Their lives 
are not empty. From the very beginning they grasp 
the necessity of drawing a line between good and 
evil, between the essential and the non-essential, 
between the moment's pleasure and its consequence. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

WHAT TO FEED THE CHILD. 

What should our children eat, if we do as well 
by them as the farmer does by his prize poultry and 
cattle? 

The following suggestions are the result of inti- 
mate study of child life covering a period of many 
years. 

Some persons believe that the child must have 
the mumps, measles, croup, etc., and actually go so 
far as to expose children to such diseases under the 
mistaken idea that as the child has to get sick in 
such fashion anyhow, it is better to have it done 
with and over as soon as possible. Children properly 
fed need not get sick. They will resist the so-called 
children's diseases, just as the horse resists tuber- 
culosis. 

The diet that follows presents the fortification 
that has withstood for more than six years all the 
assaults of infant ills in the writer's own family. 

FOR CHILDREN THREE YEARS AND OVER. 

BREAKFAST MONDAY. 

One-half small grape fruit or one-quarter large 
^rape fruit, or sliced ripe peaches, ripe raspberries, 
blackberries, strawberries or ripe cantaloupe. 

Natural brown rice and certified milk. 

Whole wheat bread and butter. 

BREAKFAST TUESDAY. 

Scraped raw apple, baked apple or whole raw 



184 STARVING AMERICA 

apple, skin and all, when the child can be trusted 
to use its teeth properly. 

Whole wheat meal porridge and certified milk. 

Whole wheat bread, sweet butter and honey. 

BREAKFAST WEDNESDAY. 

Juice of whole orange. 

Old-fashioned, unsteamed, unscoured oat meal 
with certified milk. 

Whole wheat bread and butter. 

BREAKFAST THURSDAY. 

Stewed dates. 

Poached egg on whole wheat toast. 

Certified milk. 

Whole wtieat bread and pure maple syrup. 

BREAKFAST FRIDAY. 

Stewed prunes. 

Unpearled barley with certified milk. 

Whole wheat bread. 

BREAKFAST SATURDAY. 

Grape fruit, orange juice, apple or any other 
fruit. 

Old-fashioned, undegerminated corn meal and 
certified milk. 

Whole wheat bread. 

BREAKFAST SUNDAY. 

Stewed figs or apple sauce. 

Natural wheat food or breakfast food made of 
undebased, unimpoverished, unscoured, unpolished, 
unsoaked, unbleached barley, oats or wheat with 
certified milk and a sprinkle of old-fashioned, unsul- 
phured brown sugar if it can be found. 

Whole wheat muffins made with raisins, currants 
or dates. 



WHAT TO FEED THE CHILD 185 

OBSERVATIONS: 

These breakfast combinations are not arbitrary. 
They are intended as suggestions based on a knowl- 
edge of the meaning of proteins, carbohydrates, fats 
and mineral salts. With these combinations, the 
child will not be tempted to over-eat. The appetite 
will not be abnormal. To-day he may not eat bread 
in addition to his cereals. To-morrow he may not 
be content with less than one slice of bread; or he 
may want two. His needs will guide him. Any 
variations that normal taste demands, or that will 
relieve monotony, or any breakfast food made from 
the honest raw grain, containing all of the grain, 
can be substituted as desired. The fruit may con- 
sist solely of apples with splendid results. 

The necessary potassium and calcium salts are 
found in the fruit suggested. Phosphorus, chlorine, 
iron, sodium, calcium, sulphur, silica, magnesium 
and manganese are found in the natural grains, 
milk and bread suggested. 

If the butter is not fresh, the child is better off 
without it. The less butter he eats the better. 

DINNER MONDAY. 

Soups made of a combination of four or five fresh 
vegetables and greens, §uch as onions, parsley, car- 
rots, spinach, parsnips, celery or celery tops. 

Potato baked in its skin. When the skin is baked 
crisp the child can eat it with impunity. If soggy, 
it is better to let not only the skin but the potato 
alone. 

Poached egg or an egg cooked in its shell for ten 
minutes in water at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Endives, lettuce, crisp celery or greens of any 
kind. 

Three or four dates or one or two figs or three 
or four ripe olives or a bunch of grapes in season. 



186 STARVING AMERICA ' 

DINNER TUESDAY. 

Thick lentil soup (not more than one-half cup- 
ful). 

Stewed carrots served in the water in which 
they are cooked, thickened with whole wheat meal. 

Greens. 

Whole wheat bread. 

Stewed fresh rhubarb or apple sauce, or any ripe 
fruit. 

DINNER WEDNESDAY. 
Stewed onion juice with the onions. 
Poached egg or egg cooked ten minutes at 160 
degrees. 

Stewed parsnips served in own 3auce. 
Creamed fresh peas or tender corn on cob. 
Fruit or ripe olives. 
A slice of whole wheat bread and honey. 

DINNER THURSDAY. 
Thick bean soup. 

Stewed fresh spinach served in own sauce. 
Any vegetable combination such as turnips, 
fresh beets, parsnips or potatoes. 
Barley cakes or oat cakes. 
Apples, apple pudding or apple sauce. 

DINNER FRIDAY. 

Soup made of greens with barley or rice or both. 

Dried peas, dried beans or dried lentils soaked 
ten hours and cooked ten hours. 

Old-fashioned sun-dried apples or sun-dried apri- 
cots if the fresh variety is not in season. 

Whole wheat bread. 

DINNER SATURDAY. 

Vegetable soup. 

Natural brown rice with custard sauce. 

Greens, 



WHAT TO FEED THE CHILD 187 

Sliced fresh pineapple, sliced fresh peaches, ber- 
ries or cantaloupe. 

Whole wheat bread and three or four ripe olives. 

DINNER SUNDAY. 

Chicken soup with boiled or roast chicken. 

Creamed onions, cauliflower or Brussels sprouts. 

Greens. 

Baked banana with light cake containing eggs. 

Grape juice. 

Whole wheat bread and maple syrup. 

A thin film of fresh peanut butter on such days 
as eggs are not served is a good addition to bread. 
The peanut butter must be fresh. When stale, the 
fatty acids of which it is composed split up and pro- 
duce an irritant substance called acrolein, which is 
a solvent of flesh dangerous to child or adult life. 
Nuts may be served only when ground or when the 
child has been taught to thoroughly masticate them. 
A little grated Parmesan, Roman or whole milk 
cheese can be sprinkled over potatoes, turnips, car- 
rots or bread as an occasional addition to this diet. 
It must be remembered that cheese, like eggs, beans, 
peas, lentils and milk, is nitrogen (meat). Nitro- 
gen is indispensable though too much is bad. 

The child may be allowed occasionally fresh fruit 
jelly or fresh fruit jam, both of which are semi-nat- 
ural sweets. The living ferments necessary to per- 
fect digestion are provided through the medium of 
the raw greens and raw fruits as suggested. 

EVENING LUNCH UP TO SIX YEARS. 

MONDAY. 

Certifled milk and whole wheat bread or oaten 
crackers. 



188 STARVING AMERICA 

TUESDAY, 

Certified milk and whole bread or undegermin- 
ated corn porridge. 

WEDNESDAY. 

Certified milk and whole wheat bread. 

This simple combination should be repeated or 
intelligently varied at the other evening meals, 
which should be the lightest of the day. 

OBSERVATION: 

Between six and ten eggs per week depending on 
the vigor of the child should be consumed between 
its third and ninth year. At five years six eggs con- 
stitute the outside limit. Fresh olive oil can be used 
in moderate quantities, a teaspoonful, for instance, 
with greens or salads. 

The things which the child should not eat are: 
artificial sweets (robbed of the cane salts, explained 
later) artificially colored and artificially flavored; 
grease gravy, fried foods of any kind; sulphur- 
bleached apricots, apples, peaches, pears, raisins or 
prunes; chili sauce, catsup, pickles, condiments or 
any other food containing vinegar; vegetables that 
have lost their soluble salts by boiling or stewing in 
water subsequently poured down the waste-pipe; 
boiled meats ; fried meats, liver, kidney, hard boiled 
eggs unless the latter are pulverized; molasses or 
other forms of sugar bleached with sulphurouaacid, 
cookies, ginger bread and taffy made from such 
molasses; all food artificially colored with any of 
the coal-tar dyes, all canned foods unless the cans 
are lacquered, all bake shop or drug store ice cream 
made from "loose milk," gelatine, ethereal flavors 
and artificial colors ; all factory or fancy cakes con- 
taminated with aluminum sulphate, fillers, ethereal 
flavors, stearine, artificial jellies, coal-tar colons, etc. 



WHAT TO FEED THE CHILD 189 

Ice cream made at home from certified milk or a 
mixture of certified milk and wholesome cream is 
permitted in small quantities but it should be eaten 
slowly and not on top of a full meal. Coffee and tea 
are not permissable. 

Dr. C. K. Taylor, studying the effect of coffee 
drinking on 464 school children, found that about 
29 per cent of those children drank no coffee, while 
71 per cent drank from one to two or more cups 
a day. Dr. Taylor found that as regards physical 
measurements, the children who drank coffee aver- 
aged from one and one-half to more than four 
pounds less in weight, and from one-half inch to 
more than one inch less in height, than the children 
who abstained from coffee. They were also found 
to have an average of three pounds less in hand 
strength, than the children who never drank coffee. 

Dr. Taylor concludes that it seems likely that the 
regular drinking of coffee by children, has an effect 
which seems to make the child less *'fit" physically 
as well as mentally, than those who do not use 
coffee. 

Under the above diet, constipation and other 
bowel and stomach disorders are impossible unless 
the child is permitted to stuff. If left to his own 
inclinations with such food he will manifest no 
tendency to stuff. His perfectly nourished body 
asserts no unnatural craving and as a result he 
will not gorge himself. It is absurd to assume that 
with such a bill of fare the child is being deprived 
of the hundred and one "innocent and delightful 
tidbits" which have been inherited from hundreds 
of years of grandmotherdom. 

When it can be shown that nourished upon such 
food the child is perfectly happy and that defective 
vision, defective teeth, lusterless eyes, pinched 



190 STARVING AMERICA 

cheeks, underdeveloped limbs, low resistance to 
diseases are all avoided, and sturdy, sparkling, 
buoyant, energetic childhood is produced, intelligent 
mother-love can have no patience with those who 
assert that the child should have his share of the 
world's artificial and ridiculous luxuries. 

Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon to be 
observed under such a diet, is the utter unwilling- 
ness of the child to eat between meals. He makes 
no clamor for food of any kind before dinner or in 
the afternoon. 

Prior to the age of six the child should go to bed 
at six o'clock and should sleep in all kinds of weather 
in a cold room with the windows wide open. The 
best food in the world will accomplish little if the 
child is obliged to breathe the same air twice. 

After the sixth year the child may have his 
evening meal with father and mother, continuing to 
observe the rules of simplicity regardless of the 
manner in which the table is set or the character of 
foods upon it. 

If the one condition under which little Helen's 
father and mother could have their darling restored 
to their arms consisted in a promise to feed her 
properly, could they meet that condition? 

This book is written for those who would answer, 
yes! 

If the Sunday School picnic or the birthday party 
or the circus excursion includes factory ice cream 
made of "loose milk," bacteria-infected gelatine, 
with coal-tar dye and ethereal flavors the child 
should not go. 

This book demands revolution. If its demands 
be not heeded, the alternative is that we can con- 
tinue to murder our children. We can continue to 



WHAT TO FEED THE CHILD 191 

bury those who die before their time. Let us demand 
imperatively that our representatives and our leg- 
islators prove that they know the truths written here 
before they swear fidelity to their trust as servants 
of the people. 

We must have a legally standardized loaf of 
whole wheat bread made of certified whole wheat 
meal. Otherwise, the adulterator will use the 
creamy color of the honest loaf as a mask to con- 
ceal inferiority and dirt. The white bread maker 
will then point to his immaculate loaf free from the 
faintest speck of color and triumphantly contrast its 
"chastity" with the possibility of dirt and defilement 
in the darker loaf. The people will look with sus- 
picion upon the creamy product, develop anxiety 
over it, lose faith in it and again abandon it in favor 
of the "clean" white loaf. We have certified milk, 
certified drugs, certified checks with which to pay 
for them. The certified loaf or the home-made loaf 
with love kneaded into its heart will be the standard 
bread of America when you so resolve. 

There would be no reason for condemning fruits 
or vegetables in tin cans if the canners would devise 
some means of preventing erosion in the tins by 
the action of enzymes or the action of the fruit and 
vegetable acids. Tin is not one of the benevolent 
minerals. Neither is lead. These are not found 
in the human body except as we introduce them into 
our stomachs with canned food in the shape of salts 
of tin and lead. Arsenic in cheap tin plate readily 
passes over into solution with the contents of the 
can. It is the duty of the canner to safe-guard his 
canned products from these poisons. 

The canner is now seriously aroused, over this 
question. His chemists are striving to find a way 
to prevent the formation of tin salts in vegetables 



192 STARVING AMERICA 

and fruits. Until he can guarantee his product free 
from tin in solution no child should be permitted 
to eat any food that has been packed in tin. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

INCREASING DEATH RATE. 

Great have been the changes of the past few 
years. 

People are thinking in terms of the telegraph, 
the telephone, the "wireless," the aeroplane, the 
submarine. Men have invented new machines and 
the new machines have turned upon them and have 
created new men. Men now live in wider distances 
and think in larger circles. 

But we have not only the telescope but the micro- 
scope. Life has not only become more extensive, 
but more intensive. We see the power of the little 
things, the hidden forces of life. 

The poisonous phosphorus match that destroyed 
by necrosis the bones of the men and women who 
made it; that, thoughtlessly put into the mouth of 
a child, mysteriously occasioned its sickness or 
death, yes, even the phosphorus match has been 
swept out of the land or, is to be ! 

It was common, insignificant, yet it dealt death 
subtly and slowly. Other commonplace dangers of 
the kitchen are no longer regarded as trifles, but are 
now being investigated and catalogued for just what 
they are. 

A great life assurance society has established a 
Department of Conservation through which to teach 
men, women and children the simple fundamentals 
of life. 



194 STARVING AMERICA 

This is indeed an age of high pressure and of 
rapid living. Thomas A. Edison has declared that 
he has already lived 110 years because for thirty 
or forty years he has been able to work from 
fifteen to eighteen hours a day. Here and there a 
human machine can stand the rack and wear of such 
a heavy strain, but as the Equitable Life Assurance 
Society tells us, it is useless for a man who is 
equipped to carry a hundred pounds of steam with 
safety to try to carry two hundred pounds. This is 
why so many men from forty to fifty are dying of 
kidney, heart or arterial troubles. 

Within one week the New York newspapers in 
the year 1912 reported the unexpected deaths of 
three prominent men who were living this intense 
business life in addition to the strain of their social 
duties. The world calls these tragedies "sudden" 
deaths. They were not sudden deaths. 

A few years ago a crowded express train broke 
through a bridge and destroyed a hundred lives. An 
investigation showed that the strands in the great 
cable of the bridge had been giving away one by 
one until the final strain. 

Few deaths are sudden. The daily routine of 
life, the habits of mind, of work, of worry, of recrea- 
tion, are the daily jar and strain of the strands in 
the great cables of the human bridge, which are 
thus slowly broken until some day under a heavier 
strain than usual the structure falls. It was not a 
sudden accident ; it was the inevitable end. Physical 
bankruptcy is quite similar to financial bankruptcy. 
As, long as the daily and yearly expenditure of 
strength and vitality exceeds ever so little the in- 
come of repair and recuperation, just so long will 
there be certainty that the "run" on the Bank of 
Health will finally close its doors. 



INCREASING DEATH RATE 195 

A man is as old as his arteries. The man of 
forty, fifty or even sixty years of age should not 
have arteries lacking in elasticity. When the young 
man has the arteries of the old man, it is because his 
habits of eating and working, thinking and drinking 
have crowded too many years into his short span of 
existence, giving him the arteries of the aged. 

Nothing will so soon produce hardening of the 
arteries as impure food. As the arteries harden, 
a little extra pressure produces a break like the 
snapping of a strand in the cable. 

This condition can be prevented by supplying the 
heart and its electric batteries, or nerve cells, with 
proper material to repair the waste and continual 
drain upon them. 

The blood obtains its nourishment from the 
stomach, and its oxygen from the lungs. It relieves 
itself of waste products by means of the kidneys and 
spleen. Steady, rhythmical heart-beats are brought 
about by pure food in right quantities. 

Right thinking, moderation in eating and drink- 
ing, regular daily exercise in the open air and proper 
bathing, with food of a proper kind will long with- 
stand the attacks of disease and death. 

The Equitable Life Assurance gives us a number 
of highly significant facts to consider. 
DEATH RATE. 

1909 1910 

Richmond 20.7 22.6 

Portland, Ore 9.8 11.0 

Memphis 20.1 21.4 

Washington 19.0 19.6 

Minnesota 10.7 12.3 

Albany 17.6 19.4 

New York 16.0 16.0 



196 STARVING AMERICA 

New Orleans 20.2 21.3 

Chicago 14.6 15.1 

Denver 17.0 16.4 

Los Angeles 13.7 14.0 

Birmingham 18.2 19.5 

The difference! in these death rates was due, ac- 
cording to the Equitable Life Assurance Society's 
comment to difference in age distribution, local con- 
ditions and VARYING VALUE OF PUBLIC 
HEALTH SERVICE. The average death rate for 
the year 1910 in the cities mentioned was 16.8. 

If we should teach these thirteen cities the mean- 
ing of food, how to feed their children, how to feed 
their adults ; if we should teach them th& worthless- 
ness of impoverished and denatured food, if we 
should, point out to them a short cut back to nature, 
the. death rate of 16,8 in one generation would be 
reduced to less than 6.8. 

Thoughtless people sometimes say to the writer 
in his public addresses: "Well, if our food is so 
imperfect, why do people live longer than they did 
in years gone by?" There is only one answer to that 
question: We banished yellow fever and other filth 
diseases by cleaning house. We no longer drink 
sewage on a large scale. Federal and state laws 
are invoked continually to protect us from this evil. 
Our Health Departments do not permit us to pile 
the city streets with decaying refuse. If with our 
advance in sanitation we had given the same atten- 
tion to our food supply we would have an inspiring 
story to tell. 

In the meantime we do not know that people 
live longer now-a-days (the average length of life 
is 44 years) for there are no statistics with which 
to make comparison and the Equitable figures, just 
quoted, show an increase in deaths, not a decrease. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

EFFECTS OF FOOD EXPERIMENTS IN SCHOOLS. 

A man might be compared to a steam boiler con- 
structed of many plates of various metals, differing 
in strength and thickness. Under low pressure such 
a boiler might endure for a long time. Inside the 
boiler some of the plates are slowly attracting de- 
posits. The aluminum plate resists the action of 
acids, copper plate resists rust, but the iron plate 
is corroding and becoming thinner. Finally the 
pressure in the boiler is raised a little and the boiler 
gives way — at its weakest spot. 

Man is a victim of diseases known by many dif- 
ferent names according to the position and char- 
acter of the weakest spot. 

All disease springs from pollution or impoverish- 
ment of the blood stream, and manifests itself in 
the weak spot of the individual. 

In one case we may have locomotor ataxia, in 
another a sore eye; in one case Bright's disease, in 
another rheumatism, and so on through thousands 
of disorders. 

The man who raises pigeons insists on whole 
red wheat and whole com for their food to prevent 
diseases of any kind. His object is to protect the 
weak spot. 

All the while fixed laws are at work in the human 
body. Whatever we put into the body will produce 
results according to the quality and quantity of the 
elements ingested. Hydrocyanic acid administered 



198 STARVING AMERICA 

to a Monogolian in China and hydrocyanic acid ad- 
ministered to a New Yorker in the Rockefeller In- 
stitute, 10,000 miles distant, will produce similar 
results. Morphine, digitalis, cocoaine act in Austria 
just as they act in Brazil. The proper quantity of 
certain mineral elements taken in the form of foods 
organized by nature will produce the same results 
in Bombay as in London. 

The school girls of to-day are destined to be the 
mothers of the race ten or twenty years hence. The 
study of foods and their relationship to health be- 
longs to the school room. 

The Department of Domestic Economy in all 
schools could take up this question under three heads 
— honest food, denatured food, adulterated food. 

Professor Lewis B. Allyn of the Department of 
CJiemistry, Massachusetts State Normal School, 
Westfield, Massachusetts, has shown what wonder- 
ful benefits the town of Westfield has derived from 
the study which the school children of that town 
have given to the subject of adulterated food. 

Food should be studied with regard to the value 
of the food elements which man removes by his so- 
called processes of refinement. 

Such lessons taught in all the schools of America 
would give this great land in one generation a new 
race of men. 

For a practical demonstration of these things 
let us put ten cages in the school-yard, or on the 
roof of the schoolhouse. Into each of ^ye of these 
cages place four chickens, which the school children 
may themselves feed. 

The chickens in cage No. 1 will be fed whole 
corn, whole oats, natural rice, whole wheat, un- 
pearled barley, grass or greens of any kind, 
and water. The children will note that on this diet 



FOOD EXPERIMENTS 199 

the chickens in cage No. 1 will be proud and spirited. 
Their feathers will be brilliant, their flesh firm and 
their bodies well developed. 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage 
No. 2 with equal mixtures of whole grains and de- 
natured grains, the remainder of the diet being the 
same. They will note that at the end of a period of 
six months there will be marked superiority in ap- 
pearance among the chickens in cage No. 1. 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage 
No. 3 with pearled barley, polished rice, processed 
oats, degerminated com meal and doughballs made 
of white flour and water with the same quantity of 
greens fed to chickens in cages No. 1 and No. 2, 
In a few months, the marked physical degeneracy 
of the health of these chickens will teach the chil- 
dren its own lesson. 

The same children will feed chickens in cages 
No. 4 with meat pulp from which the mineral salts 
have been extracted by leaching in distilled water. 
In addition to this they shall be fed all the soda 
crackers, white biscuits, ginger bread, ginger snaps, 
fancy cakes, white bread and candy they can eat, 
plus water with the usual quantity of gravel and 
greens. Their condition in a few months will be 
eloquently suggestive to the children. 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage 
No. 5 with white bread, white biscuits, white 
crackers and cakes, caramels, pickles, ethereal soda 
water and other fancy drinks, with gravel but with- 
out greens. As the feathers of these chickens begin 
to droop and the chickens begin to huddle in the 
corners of their cage seeking the darkness, miser- 
able, thin and sick, the lesson of the relationship of 
food to animal life will be taught. 



200 STARVING AMERICA 

At this stage of the experiment the healthy 
chickens in cage No. 1 will be transferred to cage 
No. 6 and there they will be fed on the diet of cage 
No. 5 until they begin to show the same symptoms 
of dissolution and disease. 

The chickens of cages No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, No. 5 
will then be put in cages No. 7, No. 8, No. 9, No. 10 
and will be fed on the natural, undebased, unim- 
poverished, undenatured diet of cage No. 1. The 
children will see the sick chickens recover rapidly 
and thoroughly, and they will go through life with 
a thoroughly learned lesson, and when they assume 
the responsibility of home life they will not abandon 
the laws of nature in the pursuit of some capricious 
food-ornament at the expense of the health, happi- 
ness and welfare of those dependent upon them. 



CHAPTER XXV. 
THE HUNGRY SOIL. 

The Nile floods raised grain for the Egyptians in 
such abundance that the land of Egypt became the 
"granary of the nation." Along the valley of the 
Nile the staff of life sprang up out of the thin film 
of mineral silt and clay which the swollen river laid 
at the feet of the Egyptians. The Nile performed 
a function, the significance of which was not under- 
stood, but the results of which were remarkable. 
The Egyptian bread was made of sound, vigorous, 
undegerminated, undemineralized grain and the 
soundness of the grain passed into the bodies of the 
men who fed upon it. 

When the Nile annually overflowed the land of 
Egypt, it did not bring with it unnatural chemical 
fertilizer or the putrefactions of manure. The Nile 
flood brought from the hills into the valleys tons of 
mineral rock in dust-like particles or held in solution 
by the waters, which replaced in the soil the vitaliz- 
ing mineral elements which the vegetation of the 
preceding year had taken from it. With the unlock- 
ing of the flood gates of the Nile the bread problem 
of all ages should have been solved, and as if to 
emphasize the meaning of stone in the destiny of 
man, the Egyptians piled stone upon stone in pyra- 
mids that will not die. 

The Sphinx is no longer silent. She tells the 
weaklings of the twentieth century that back there 
in the darkness of humanity's cradle lies the secret 



202 STARVING AMERICA 

that will make men free and strong and mighty — ^the 
secret of stone. The certainty of honest bread and 
plenty of it means more to the people who live on 
the surface of this planet than poet or philosopher 
has ever taught. Honest bread grown from lava 
rock, means for the children of men, time, inclina- 
tion and power through which to express the almost 
infinite potentialities of the human family. Let us 
visit our quarries of volcanic stone and our beds of 
volcanic mud so that we may grasp the meaning they 
have for the feeble nations of the earth. 

In its precious freight of fertilizing rock the 
Nile flood poured lavish treasures upon the people 
of Egypt which might have taught humanity a les- 
son that would have prevented the bread famines 
of Ireland, India, Russia and China. There can be 
no funeral pyres by the roadside or on the outskirts 
of the camp, the starved bodies of men will not be 
burned to the god of ignorance, the vulture will no 
longer hover over human carrion labeled ''offered to 
lifeless bread and too little of it," when the lesson 
of the Nile is learned. 

Somebody has said that in England two million 
people are hungry all the time and that slowly but 
surely the fibre of the nation is eaten into by a sub- 
tle and insidious starvation. Another has said that 
England with her people struggling for bread can- 
not get sufficient young men for her armies physical- 
ly able to stand the rigors of five years' service in 
her tropical possessions. 

The hunger of the soil for mineral rock was not 
known in the valley of the Nile, and the pyramids 
tell us that the hunger of men for honest bread free 
from the pollutions of the stable will not be known 
in the valley of twentieth century enlightenment. 



THE HUNGRY SOIL 208 

It has been noted that in volcanic soil and on 
mountainous lands man harvests wonderful crops. 
Blindly turning his back upon these phenomena, he 
takes the by-products of the slaughter house and 
the dung of the pig pen in the form of ammonia and 
phosphate fertilizers, and with such so-called plant 
food, he rots and sours and pollutes the earth, in- 
oculating the roots of his plants with the fountains 
of putrefaction. The vigorous plant for a while 
may resist disease just as the vigorous man for a 
while may resist typhoid, but soil overfed on decom- 
posing nitrogenous compounds, uric acid, etc., and 
underfed on the mineral food which misguided 
superstition has falsely believed to be abundantly 
present in all earth, inevitably produces physiolog- 
ical discord in vegetable life. The ignorant farmer, 
hidebound by the traditions of his father and in- 
spired by the desperate teachings of a misguided 
science, looks up into the diseased leaves instead of 
down at the starved roots, and believes that by 
spraying his feeble plants with germicides and fancy 
serums, he can kill blight and scale and fungi and 
cut worms and weevils and the other morbid growths 
and parasites which deprave and destroy the fruits 
of the earth. 

Along the foothills of Maine and in all land con- 
tiguous to volcanic formation where the rains carry 
the digested or broken mineral stone to the soil, 
nature produces crops so lusty and vigorous that 
they resist plant-sickness and men fed on the unre- 
fined or un juggled crops of such soil resist body- 
sickness. Mineral rock of volcanic origin abounds 
all over the earth, rich in iron, calcium, magnesium, 
potassium, phosphorus, silica, manganese. The 
rock formations of Washington, Oregon, Colorado 
and Maine emphasize the secret of the Nile 



204 STARVING AMERICA 

Why is manure fertilizer impossible on an ex- 
tended basis ? For the reason that no farmer is able 
to grow enough forage on poor land to feed enough 
stock to make enough manure to make that poor 
land rich. Any farmer, who on any farm in the 
United States can produce enough feed and forage 
to feed enough live stock to produce enough manure 
to turn that farm from a non-productive state into 
a high state of cultivation, can raise the dead to life. 
One farmer may procure enough feed, cotton seed 
meal, bran and shorts from another farm to feed 
animals which will produce manure to promote in 
his particular farm a high state of fertility. What 
is taken from one farm may produce temporary re- 
sults in another farm, but in the meantime where 
are the farms that thus squander their own manure 
going to get sufficient soil-food to keep their own 
soil from exhaustion? By the unnatural manure 
method of fertilizing, one farm may be maintained 
in a state of fertility at the expense of ten adjacent 
farms which are required to exhaust themselves in 
order to lend their strength to the invalid farm. 

Dr. C. G. Hopkins says, "In nearly all sections 
of the country a farmer can be found here and there 
— sometimes one in ten, and sometimes only one in 
a hundred — who feeds all the crops that he raises 
and also all that he can buy at reasonably low prices 
from his neighbors, supplementing all this with pur- 
chased bran, shorts, oil meal, cotton seed meal, etc., 
and is thus able to produce sufficient manure to 
maintain or even to increase the fertility of his own 
farm at the expense of some othei farm." 

If keeping live stock with its continuous per- 
formance method of eating the fruits of the soil in 
order to produce manure for the soil, constituted a 
natural method of bringing up bad soil to good 



THE HUNGRY SOIL 205 

condition, we would have no soil problems; but 
when the products of a number of farms are required 
to artificially increase the fertility of one farm, 
where is the nation on an extended basis to get the 
manure necessary to bring back to life all the farms 
that exhaust themselves in an effort to help their 
feeble neighbor? Is he not foolish, who in order to 
strengthen one piece of land, is obliged to sap the 
strength of another? By such "farm-foolosophy" an 
endless chain of degeneracy is maintained not only 
at the expense of the soil health but also at the ex- 
pense of the public health. The farmer must learn 
that in sickening the soil with manure and the para- 
sites that flourish in corruption, he is contributing to 
the process of decay which is now eating at the 
heart of man. 

The Bureau of Soils, United States Department 
of Agriculture, has done work for the nation of suffi- 
cient importance to send us back to the pyramids for 
wisdom. The politicians have not seen to it that 
the lessons have been applied. 

Why should we talk of over-population or of in- 
sufficient food when we look at Japan, Germany, 
Italy, France and Spain ? Japan, including the island 
of Formosa, embraces less than 150,000 square miles. 
In 1910 that little stretch of land supported 
over 51,000,000 people or 350 to the square mile. 
The United States with an area of more than 3,- 
600,000 square miles in the same year supported 
93,000,000 people or 20 to the square mile. A sig- 
nificant ratio of 17 to 1 ! 

The State of Texas alone contains 262,290 square 
miles and if populated like Japan could support all 
the people of the United States leaving all the other 
states with their abandoned cities and plains as 
birth places for a new race. If the United States 



206 STARVING AMERICA 

were populated as thickly as Japan she could to-day- 
support 1,265,789,400 people. 

Why go to Japan for a contrast? 

Germany with an area of a little more than two 
hundred thousand square miles supports 64,000,000 
people, an average of 305 to the square mile. Italy 
with an area of 110,000 square miles supports a 
population of 33,500,000 an average of 304 to the 
square mile. France supports an average of 188 to 
the square mile; Portugal an average of 155 to the 
square mile. 

Yet in the United States corn is dear because 
producing but 26 bushels to the acre there is not 
enough to go round. In Germany with her fertilizer 
of lava rock the farmer who does not produce 50 
bushels per acre is ashamed. 

We need not worry about over-population. We 
need not worry about bread famine. We need only 
worry about our failure to put our 10,000 little red 
school houses at the country cross-roads to a good 
use. We need only worry about the empty "isms" 
of our colleges and universities. We need only 
worry about continuous ignorance, denatured soil 
and denatured food. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

FOOD REFORM IN THE GROCERY STORE — BULLETINS OF 
THE IDEAL GROCERY. 

A man is as old as his arteries. The arteries 
harden through bad habits which retard the elimin- 
ation of the blood, lymph, bone and tissue salts. 
Lime salts are deposited when by excesses we 
squander the phosphorus of our body and when by 
food follies we remove the phosphorus from our diet. 

Right thinking, moderation in eating and drink- 
ing, proper exercise, honest food will regulate the 
hardening of the arteries. Excess eating, excess 
drinking, excess excitement, excess worry (all worry 
is excess) and excesses of all kinds make themselves 
felt first of all in the human heart. 

The grocery stores of the future will consider 
the laws of the body and will do their share in pro- 
moting the happiness of the human heart. On 
their walls will appear some such signs as we will 
now set down. 

CONDENSED MILK. 

Our condensed milk contains the butter fats and 
other solids that ought to be there. A chain of 
grocery stores in New York City in 1911 paid a fine 
of $500.00 and the Department of Health seized and 
destroyed 40,000 cans of adulterated condensed milk. 
Condensed milk is a baby food. Draw your own 
conclusions. 

JUSTICE. 

The grocer who trifles knowingly, or through 



208 STARVING AMERICA 

lack of proper care, with the foods on which babies 
depend for their life should repent in jail. 

LOOSE MILK. 

We don't sell it. When nobody sells it more 
babies will survive. 

VANILLA. 

Our vanilla extract contains no tonka beans, 
coumarin or vanillin. It is made of vanilla beans 
and is not diluted. It is not sold in short weight 
decoy bottles. 

SPICES. 
We don't sell exhausted spices because the den- 
tist needs oil of cloves, oil of cinnamon, etc. Our 
spices contain all the fixed and volatile oil nature 
put there. 

FLAVORS. 

We don't sell strawberry, raspberry, peach, 
banana, pineapple, pistachio, cherry extracts which 
are made from formic ether, oenanthic ether, valer- 
ianate ether, ethyl ether, amyl ether, benzoic ether, 
butyric ether, esters and aldehydes. This is a 
grocery store, not a drug store. 

SPIRIT VINEGAR. 

We don't sell it. Our cider vinegar comes from 
apples, not from acetic acid and coal-tar dye. Our 
wine vinegar comes from grapes. All vinegar is 
diluted with water. So is ours. 

JAM. 

A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty among 
Jams should be organized. Glucose, apple stock 
(skins and cores), apple juice (prepared from apple 
waste), inorganic phosphoric or tartaric acid, bold 
mention of **berries" on the neck strip of the jar 



FOOD REFORM IN THE GROCERY 209 

with the sacred 1-10 of 1 per cent of benzoate of soda 
attached, give us the word "compound," also the 
shivers. 

BLACKBALL. 

If a store cannot OR WILL NOT tell the plain, 
blunt truth concerning every food product on its 
shelves, it is your privilege to stay out of that store. 

TEA. 

The Government's new Tea Test shows prussian 
blue, gypsum or other facing or coloring on doctored 
teas. NO DOCTORED TEAS HERE. 

BUTTER. 

Our butter is not "processed" butter or "reno- 
vated" butter. It has never seen a homogenizer. 
If you want a reworked mixture this is not the place. 

OLEO. 

We sell oleomargarine as such. It is all right but 
it is not butter. We would much rather eat it than 
a lot of some butter. It is pure. 

FULL CREAM CHEESE. 

We haven't any. Nobody has. There is no such 
thing. Our cheese is "whole milk" cheese. It con- 
tains all the cream the cow gave, but no more. 
"Skim milk" cheese is in the majority. Think it 
over. 

MOLASSES. 

All New Orleans molasses is bleached with sul- 
phurous acid. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania 
condemned sulphurous acid as a poison. Our mo- 
lasses is darker than the bleached kind because it is 
not doped. 

DRIED FRUITS. 

We sell pure prunes, raisins, currants and citron. 
They are free from sulphurous acid. We sell sun- 
dried apples and apricots, but no other kind. If 



210 STARVING AMERICA 

the public is satisfied with brunette raisins why does 
it want blonde peaches? 

PURE MEANS NOTHING. 

All eggs are "pure" eggs. The crab apple is 
just as "pure" as the greening. A piece of beef off 
the shin bone of an ox is just as pure as a porter- 
house steak. The word "pure" is overpuffed with 
pride. It's quality that counts. 

LEGAL. 

If you want lime juice or any other food pre- 
served with sulphurous acid it is legal. If you like 
such foods buy them, but not in the dark. 

ECONOMY. 

Small prunes contain twice as many pits and 
skins as large prunes. Which is cheaper, prune 
meat or prune pits? Think it over. 

PURELY VEGETABLE. 

"Purely vegetable" does not mean "harmless." 
Opium, strychnine, cocaine, laudenuni are "purely 
vegetable." 

ART. 

We have no art department. Coal-tar dyes be- 
long to the ribbon business, not the food business. 
"Harmless" color schemes are all right for the label, 
but not for the food. 

CATSUP. 

Our catsup is made from tomatoes, not from to- 
mato pulp. It contains no potato starch or any other 
starch. It contains no coal-tar dye and is not pre- 
served with benzoate. 

ALUM. 
The law allows alum in pickles, mince meat, re- 
lishes, baking powder. We don't. If you think alum 
is good for you just try it on your cat. 



FOOD REFORM IN THE GROCERY 211 
CANNED GOODS. 

We don't buy last year's "jobs" or "overstocks'' 
from the canner or packer to catch you with "bar- 
gain" prices. We sell no watered products. Add 
the water from your own spigot. Even if the 
Bureau of Water Supply does not give trading 
stamps, it is cheaper to get water from the spigot 
than the grocer. 

JUGGLING. 

All the jugglers are not in the circus. The same 
bag of coffee in this store is not dumped into three 
different bins to come out at three different prices. 

HATS AND MUSHROOMS. 

Panama hats are bleached with sulphurous acid. 
So are canned mushrooms and other things. 

LACQUERED TINS. 
If salts of tin were a good thing in your food 
God would have put them there, but he didn't. 
That's why we want all canned foods packed in 
lacquered tins or glass. 

MINCE MEAT. 

Our mince meat contains no "rejected" cur- 
rants and raisins, no skins and cores and no filler 
of glucose. It contains no antiseptic. It was made 
for human beings, not for test tubes. 

FRENCH FIZZLES. 

We don't sell imported French peas, string beans, 
etc., colored with sulphate of copper. There is a 
law against them in Pennsylvania and another in 
this store. 

GELATINE POWDERS. 

Can't buy them here. The story is too miserable 
to be hung up in public places. Ask some one who 
knows. It will save us from bad talk. 



212 STARVING AMERICA 

CLEAN. 

Our foods are covered. Sanitary protection 
means a little more to us than it does to some polit- 
ically infested health departments. 

JO FOOD FRAUD. 

This is a pure food store. It won't tolerate any 
form of food fraud or deception. The drugs, dyes 
and flavors which politics have white-washed cannot 
get in here though they are legal. Politics and 
health laws don't go any better together than ice 
cream and beer. 

BENZOATE. 

If you want foods preserved with benzoate they 
sell them down the street. We won't sell them be- 
cause we have no M. D. diploma that entitles us to 
prescribe medicine in a grocery store. 

ONE DOSE. 

One dose of the things we don't allow in our 
foods won't kill you. People don't die that way from 
food frauds. It is the bad history of food drugs and 
the bad things that food drugs conceal that we ob- 
ject to. 

POLISHED RICE. 

Polished rice won't do you as much harm as 
whiskey, but it won't do you the good that rice was 
designed to do when God made it his way. If the 
rice polisher knows more about what rice ought to 
be than the Almighty, where are his credentials? 
OUR CAKES. 

Our cakes contain eggs, not ''egg color." If egg 
color was not a fraud intended to represent eggs 
that are off on a vacation, some other color would 
be used besides yellow and cakes would be lavender, 
purple, pink, green. 



FOOD REFORM IN THE GROCERY 213 

CORN MEAL. 

We sell corn meal containing all of the com, 
including the good part usually fed to hogs. 

OAT MEAL. 

Our oat meal contains all of the things that 
grew up in the oat. We don't believe any more in 
denaturing oats than we do in denaturing men and 
women. 

WHOLE WHEAT BREAD. 

Pale children often need foods, not drugs. 
Honest bread made from all of the wheat, nothing 
added and nothing taken away, will put life in the 
child. 

BROWN RICE. 

All natural rice is brown. That's the way it 
grows. You can make it white by denaturing it. 
What chance would a baby have if you denatured 
its milk? 

WHITE FLOUR. 

GOD put twelve vitalizing mineral salts into 
the wheat. MAN takes eight of them out in order 
to make flour white and then wonders why there are 
so many false teeth. 

NATURAL LAWS. 

You expect milk, eggs, meat, fish, tomatoes, etc., 
to spoil. Why? Because you know they will obey 
nature's laws. Don't expect other foods not to obey 
the same laws. They will unless you put *'dope" in 
them. 

CANDY. 

Our candy contains no coal-tar dye, no flavoring 
ethers, no soap stone or radiator lacquer, no car- 
penter's glue, no paraffin, no shellac, no iron oxides, 
gum benzoin or substitute for pure chocolate. 



214 STARVING AMERICA 

FRESH EGGS. 

Our eggs were not laid in Heaven. Every egg 
answers for its own career. We sell storage eggs 
under their right name. We sell near-by eggs for 
just what they are. All eggs are eggs. Fresh eggs 
are fresh eggs. 

OUR BREAD. 

Our bread is wrapped in sanitary wrappers. It 
is not pawed over by dirty fingers. Flies have to 
look elsewhere for a meal. Why have bread clean 
in the first place, if you don't keep it clean? 
nature's gifts. 

Nature sends us hundreds of things out of life- 
giving earth. She intends us to eat them. Fresh 
lettuce, spinach, endives, celery, onions, carrots, par- 
snips, turnips, cauliflower, cabbage, etc. Nature 
wants us to eat oranges, lemons, grape fruit, apples, 
pineapple, figs, dates, bananas, plums, peaches, rasp- 
berries, strawberries, blackberries, currants, grapes, 
etc. 

HAND-MADE. 
The body must be built from building material. 
The body cannot get such material from the food 
unless it is in the food. Hand-made or artificial 
concoctions cannot stand beside nature's offerings. 
Thinks this over when you are hungry. 

NUTS. 

Walnuts, hickory nuts, peanuts, pecans, filberts, 
Brazils, almonds were made to eat. That's what 
we have teeth for. 

grape JUICE. 

The juice of the grape comes from nature. It 
is one of the soft drinks we are glad to sell. Our 
other soft drinks are all right, too, because we don't 
have any. Grape juice does not need coal-tar dyes, 



FOOD REFORM IN THE GROCERY 215 

ethereal flavors or benzoate. Artificial concoctions 
do. 

MEAT. 

People forget that pea beans, marrow beans, red 
kidney beans, white kidney beans, black turtle beans, 
yellow eye beans, lima beans, green peas, yellow peas, 
white marrow peas, blackeye peas and lentils con- 
tain more protein or tissue-building material than 
roasts, steaks and chops. People forget that the 
bean is beef, the pea i§ lamb, the lentil is pork. 

WISDOM. 

Wise is he who eats ripe fruit, matured greens 
and well cooked vegetables every day. 

THE CHILD. 

The conservation of the city boy and girl de- 
pends upon the honesty of its food. We have printed 
suggestions for the child's breakfast, dinner and 
supper. Take them home, study them, act upon 
them. If everybody would do that we would come 
pretty close to having a nation of perfect nien and 
women in twenty years. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

AN IDEAL RESTAURANT. 

Is the average American destined to perish mis- 
erably and immediately? He will not. He will 
travel along just as he travels now. His average of 
efficiency, buoyancy, good nature, endurance and 
vitality will be the same indifferent average that he 
finds everywhere around him. But he can improve 
his vigor and .perhaps lengthen his life by being 
mindful of two things that he was not mindful of 
before. 

In the first place, he must eat with an intelligent 
idea of the purpose of food. Food is not what one 
eats. Food is what one digests and assimilates. 
Keeping this idea in mind at meal times, let him 
make selection of the food he requires. 

In the second place, instead of remaining indif- 
ferent to the gravity of modern food abuses, let him 
agitate reform and by slow but steady progress 
bring about a return to the honest and wholesome 
conditions under which living is at its best. 

Let us consider a typical business man's 
luncheon at one of the city clubs or restaurants. It 
will be something like this : 

Cocktail, oysters on the half shell, roast beef, 
mashed potatoes, asparagus, white bread, butter, 
pie, cheese, coffee. 

There are a hundred variations of this luncheon 
but they are all quite similar in substance. 



218 STARVING AMERICA 

After eating the oyster^ and while waiting for 
his portion of beef, he nibbles upon white bread or 
rolls. He then eats all of the beef, as a rule quite 
hurriedly, a spoonful of mashed potatoes, the aspar- 
agus tips, all of the cheese and pie, and then while 
removing the band from his cigar, swallows his 
coffee. 

Let us analyze. that meal. The oyster while not 
essentially a food, but rather a condimental sub- 
stance, contains, nevertheless, six per cent protein; 
the beef contains eighteen per cent protein; the 
cheese contains twenty-five per cent protein; the 
white bread contains nine per cent protein. At a 
low estimate nearly one-third of the business man's 
luncheon consists of protein food. He began the 
day with two eggs and a rasher of bacon. The eggs 
contain fifteen per cent protein, the bacon nine per 
cent. At his evening meal he will eat a big steak or 
its equivalent in chops and on top of this he con- 
sumes a generous portion of roquefort, camembert 
or some other similar cheese. Not only does his 
luncheon consist of excess protein, but the three 
meals of the day bring him about the same quan- 
tity. 

He does not work in the ditch. His gentle exer- 
cise indoors rarely excites perspiration. 'He leads a 
sedentary life. Why does he eat so much protein? 
Does he not know that his organs of elimination are 
whipped to their utmost in order to dispose of the 
excess of nitrogen which such a diet imposes upon 
him. 

On a diet of oats the horse travels all day, drag- 
ging an immense burden behind him. He is in action 
constantly. None of his organs of digestion have 
an opportunity to grow sluggish. But nature sees 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 219 

to it that his food contains only one-eighth or about 
twelve per cent of protein. The minerals are not 
removed. 

The horse with its tremendous expenditure of 
physical energy requires twelve per cent protein. 
Man thinks he needs thirty-five per cent. As a re- 
sult, man is a diligent reader of patent medicine 
advertisements. This does not mean that man should 
eat oats. It means that man should learn a lesson 
from the oat-eater. 

He must realize that a diet overloaded with pro- 
tein and minerally exhausted will not perform the 
same kind of service for him that a diet properly 
balanced in fat, protein, carbohydrates and organic 
mineral salts will render. 

Some day a big hotel or a "Business Man's Lunch 
on Broadway'* will throw its doors open to the pub- 
lic according to new principles. On the walls of 
the dining room statements like the following will 
appear : 

We have prepared a dozen combination luncheons 
containing the foods to which you are most partial. 
You will find your favorite dishes represented in 
some one of these combinations. They have all been 
arranged on a well-balanced basis. 

If split up and analyzed each of our combinations 
is approximately as follows: 

Fat, four to eight per cent. 

Protein, ten to fourteen per cent. 

Carbohydrates, forty-five to sixty per cent. 

Organic Mineral Salts, two to three per cent. 

In cooking all our vegetables, legumes, greens, 
fruits and meats we carefully conserve the soluble 
salts. According to long recognized methods of 
cookery these valuable salts went down the waste 
pipe. The vegetables and greens in each combina- 



220 STARVING AMERICA 

tion afford the necessary bulk demanded by the 
peristaltic action of the digestive organs. 
Booklets lying on each table will contain: 

OUR STANDARDS. 

MILK. 

Pure clean milk contains the sixteen elements 
which the body requires for its growth and sus- 
tenance. Pure milk in addition to being a perfect 
food is also a perfect culture for the development 
of pathogenic (disease-breeding) bacteria. There- 
fore we use no *'loose" milk. We serve "certified 
milk" only. This milk is produced under the direc- 
tion of the County Medical Society, guaranteed sib- 
solutely free from disease-breeding bacteria. 

Such milk is produced in sanitary dairies. The 
hands of the milkers are sterilized. The milkers 
themselves are under the supervision of examining 
physicians. When there is sickness in their homes 
they are not permitted to work. The cows are tested 
for tuberculosis. They are fed scientifically on bal- 
anced rations of whole grains and greens, grasses 
and the seeds of grasses. They are washed before 
milking. 

The milk is cooled at once. All animal heat is 
withdrawn and at no time is the temperature allowed 
to rise above 45 degrees Fahrenheit. It is kept in 
sterilized bottles until served. At regular intervals, 
it undergoes a test for bacteria count. It is not 
skimmed. It contains all the butter fat produced 
by healthy cows, no more, no less. 

Under such conditions pure milk of poor quality, 
milk contaminated with bacteria, milk from which 
the cream has been separated, milk to which water 
has been added, dirty milk, milk kept sweet by the 
action of chemical preservatives is impossible. 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 221 

CREAM. 

The value of cream is determined by its per- 
centage of butter fat. Our cream must have the 
same pedigree as our milk. It must be clean, fresh 
and free from all micro-organisms except the bene- 
ficial lactic bacteria. 

The difficulty of securing pure, fresh, wholesome 
cream with a sweet flavor, is not appreciated by 
the general public. We are mindful of that difficulty 
and no cream which falls below the National Stand- 
ard for Butter Fat is tolerated by us. 

ICE CREAM. 

Our ice cream is made of a mixture of certified 
milk and cream and fresh eggs. It is flavored with 
pure vanilla, pure raspberries, pure strawberries, 
pure peaches, pure maple sap or pure filtered honey. 
It contains no commercial "binder" or "bodyfier." It 
contains no glucose. It contains no corn starch or 
other form of filler commonly employed in the pro- 
duction of commercial ice cream. The most delicate 
child may eat it with absolute freedom. Following 
is a recipe for making one of our frozen dainties 
which might be called "Milk and Honey of the Egyp- 
tians, Iced:'* 

One pint certified milk. 

One pint pure cream (one quart certified milk 
may be used instead with delicious results). 

Beat the yolks of two eggs. 

Add 10 ounces pure filtered honey and beat again. 

Beat the whites of two eggs stiff. 

Add the beaten yolks and honey, mix thoroughly. 

Add the milk, or cream and milk. Freeze. 

For children, the milk, egg and honey mixture 
is more digestible than the mixture containing added 
cream. The most delicate child can eat it with im- 
punity. 



222 STARVING AMERICA 

BUTTER. 

Butter is made of many kinds. Most butter is 
a mere emulsion of artificially colored butter fat. It 
is colored with one of the permissible coal-tar dyes, 
annato or saffron. The peasants of Europe still 
appreciate the flavor of real butter. In the United 
States, butter flavor is almost forgotten. Most 
American butter makers separate the cream from 
the milk by a machine and the butter is churned at 
once, thus producing the emulsified mass w^ith which 
most of us are familiar. 

Butter to be worthy of the name must be pro- 
duced from ripened cream which has undergone 
the normal lactic fermentation necessary to the de- 
velopment of butter flavor, also necessary for the 
destruction of any other organisms that may be 
present in the cream. We serve pure butter salted 
and unsalted. We tolerate no artificial color. The 
use of color is an imitation of butter made in June 
from cream which is the product of grass fed cows. 

People do not demand that Swiss cheese shall 
be yellow, but for some capricious reason they 
want their butter to reach them under such a mask. 
Our standard represents a return to nature. 

CHEESE. 

Our cheese is uncolored for the same reason that 
our butter is uncolored. We do not serve "Full 
cream" cheese. Nobody does. There is no such 
thing. Cheese is either whole milk cheese contain- 
ing all the fat the cow gave and no more, or skimmed 
milk cheese containing none of the fat the cow gave. 
Our cheese is the properly ripened whole milk 
product. 

EGGS. 

All eggs served in our Pure Food Restaurant 
must be not only fresh, but they must be produced 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 223 

by contented hens, properly fed on grains and 
greens. Our specifications for the production of 
eggs are just as rigid as our specifications for the 
production of milk. Storage eggs do not yield the 
inimitable flavor of fresh eggs produced by scien- 
tifically fed hens. 

CHICKEN. 
The ideal chicken, properly fed, develops small 
bones and a large plump breast. The Department of 
Agriculture has spent a great deal of time in teach- 
ing the poultry producer how to feed his chickens 
for health and vitality. Ground corn, wheat, barley, 
oats, grass, calcium carbonate and calcium phos- 
phate, in the form of ground bone or oyster shells, 
together with necessary mineral salts to be found in 
healthy soil, constitute the food of all chickens 
served in our dining room. Storage chickens are 
taboo here. We make a specialty of a tender, meaty 
bird, roasted. The fine delicate flavor of our pure 
food chicken tells its own story better than we can. 

TURKEY. 

The only time to eat turkey is between Thanks- 
giving and last of March. Storage men will tell you 
that in spite of the large holiday consumption of 
turkeys, most turkeys are consumed between March 
and Thanksgiving, during the very period when they 
are out of season. Any chef who serves turkey dur- 
ing the summer is defying the laws of nature. In 
order to produce turkeys for summer consumption, 
the bird must be killed during the winter, frozen 
and kept in storage until called upon. The turkey 
should be consumed when it is fit. Freezing does 
not add to its flavor; on the contrary, physiological 
and chemical changes are set up during its long 
sleep on ice. The fine natural flavor of the bird is 
gradually lost and a new flavor sometimes extremely 



224 STARVING AMERICA 

objectionable, takes its place. In our Dining Room 
we serve turkeys only when they are in season ; that 
is, when they are fit to eat ; because of that fact we 
do not have to resort to the storage man for our 
supplies. 

OYSTERS. 

After taking the oyster from its bed, it is im- 
mersed in fresh water, under the influence of which 
it becomes bloated and bleached producing an ap- 
pearance of plumpness and firmness. The water in 
which oysters are floated may not always be clean 
water. Oysters take on whatever contamination 
may be present in the water in which they are im- 
mersed. Oysters taken from infected beds are 
frequently the cause of typhoid fever. The oysters 
served in our Pure Food Restaurant are certified 
oysters, procured from inspected beds which means 
that they are absolutely free from bacteria. 

GUINEA FOWLS. 

September, October, November and December 
are the only four months during which guinea fowls 
should be consumed for the reason that during the 
breeding season their fine flavor is distinctly marred. 
In spite of this fact people do not ordinarily begin 
to eat them until New Year day. In order to turn 
the guinea fowl season topsy turvy, the bird has to 
be killed, frozen, and put away until the misguided 
connoisseur calls for it. There is no guinea fowl 
on our menu only while it is in season and fit to eat. 

SQUAB. 

The common squab ordinarily served in the 
average hotel or restaurant is known to the hotel 
man as the "Banquet Squab." They cost from $1.75 
to $2.50 per dozen. Like most other birds they are 
educated through a long period of confinement in 
ice before they are served. Such squabs by the art 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 225 

of the average chef can be made to look delicious. 
The brown and crackled parchment of the lately 
frozen squab, delicately trimmed with fresh green 
sprigs and served on immaculate china, is a sham. 
We will have none of it. Squabs in season, fresh, 
tender, wholesome, delicate, is our rule. No other 
rule is recognized. 

FISH. 

The flesh of all fish is much less stable than the 
flesh of meat-producing animals. It splits up more 
rapidly than meat because the elements of which it 
is composed are more loosely associated. Fish is 
thus subject to the processes of decomposition at a 
more rapid rate and with less resistance than meat. 
Many intestinal troubles, including ptomaine pois- 
oning, result from eating fish which is not strictly 
fresh. For this reason no fish is served in our Pure 
Food Restaurant out of season. The storage man's 
influence is again kept at a distance. We will not 
serve shad roe in winter. It is necessary to resort 
tc chemical preservatives or to embalming in ice 
in order to carry the shad roe from its summer 
origin into the winter's diet. So with all other fish. 
Turkey in summer and shad roe in mid-winter are 
details of a topsy turvy condition which we are 
striving to set right. 

MEATS. 

We depend upon the Federal Inspection Service 
of the United States Government for the integrity 
of our meat supply, but exercise keen scrutiny in 
selecting cuts of tender fibre. In cooking meats we 
make a specialty of conserving the extractives con- 
taining the valuable tissue salts of phosphorus and 
potassium. Boiled meats unless served in its own 
juices is not a food, in fact dogs fed on meat which 
previously has been subjected to the action of dis- 



226 STARVING AMERICA 

tilled water, thereby losing its tissue salts, will 
sicken and die. Roasted, broiled, stewed, curried or 
minced, we see to it that our meat dishes turn none 
of their valuable elements over to the soup pot. We 
have no method of utilizing by-products in our 
Restaurant. 

SOUPS. 
It is not possible to make good soups out of 
storage meat or fowl. The average hotel soup is a 
flavorless liquor colored with caramel, in which ar- 
tistically chiselled vegetables and stars, crescents, 
circles, squares and letters of the alphabet made of 
Italian paste languidly float. Beef for the table 
should be ripened for nearly a month before eating, 
but beef for soup must be as fresh as possible. Soup 
properly made, contains the stimulating and vital- 
izing energy of the soluble salts contained in the 
vegetables, greens and meats used in its preparation. 
The French dietitian understands the real value of 
honest soup. Where we use grains, such as rice and 
barley, in making soup, we employ only the unde- 
natured product, such as unpearled barley and un- 
scoured and unpolished rice. These grains in their 
natural condition contain the iron, phosphorus, cal- 
cium manganese and other organic mineral com- 
pounds which nature elaborates in whole grains for 
man's benefit. We see to it that such grains reach 
our kitchens in their natural state. 

VEGETABLES. 

We serve two kinds of vegetables, fresh and 
canned, and give preference to such canned vege- 
tables as are put up in lacquered tins or glass, 
thereby preventing the formation of salts of tin 
which are produced by the action of the vegetable 
acids on the metal base. The conduct of salts 
of tin in the human body is believed to exercise a 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 227 

pernicious influence on the kidneys and other or- 
gans. There are plenty of fresh vegetables to be 
obtained all the year round, although some people 
insist on winter vegetables in the summer and sum- 
mer vegetables in the winter. Our bill of fare con- 
tains two vegetable headlines "Canned" and 
"Fresh." We serve no vegetables sweetened with 
saccharine or colored with sulphate of copper. In 
brief, our canned vegetables are absolutely free from 
coloring or any kind of preservative, or any kind of 
artificial flavoring, with the exception of common 
table salt. 

FRUITS. 

We serve fresh fruits and fruits preserved in cans 
and glass jars. The canned fruits must be packed 
in lacquered tins. The only method of preserving 
tolerated is by sterilizing with heat and by hermeti- 
cal sealing. Benzoate of soda, fluoride of calcium 
and sulphurous acid, often employed in preserving 
fruits and vegetables, are not tolerated in our dining 
rooms, kitchen or pantry. 

BREAD. 

The elements removed from the natural grains 
in "refining" them to satisfy the artificial taste- 
standards of man, include the very substance of 
which the blood, bones, and tissues are constructed. 

We serve two kinds of bread, the home made 
bread and honest whole wheat bread, containing all 
the wheat, nothing added and nothing removed. 

Such bread has the rich, nutty, "wheatty" flavor 
of the whole grain. 

Our Pure Food Restaurant is doing the city of 

a service of significant importance in restoring 

to its diet the certified loaf of whole wheat bread. 



228 STARVING AMERICA 

RICE. 

Our rice puddings are made of natural, un- 
secured, unpolished rice, which contains all the ele- 
ments which nature organized in the grain. 

CORN MEAL. 

Our corn bread, corn muffins and com porridge 
are prepared from the certified whole corn-meal con- 
taining all of the corn. 

EXTRACTS. 

Our vanilla extract contains no Tonka beans, 
coumarin, vanillin or Tahiti beans. It is made of 
the Mexican Vanilla bean. Our lemon and orange 
extracts are prepared according to the United 
States Pharmacopoea standard. Fruit extracts 
made from formic ether, oenanthic ether, valerian- 
ate ether, butyric ether, benzoic ether, esters and 
aldehydes are barred. There is no law against them 
except in this restaurant. 

SPICES. 

Our spices contain all the fixed and volatile oil 
which nature put there. Our white pepper is the 
creamy white heart of the finest black pepper berry 
from which the outer shell, or wood fibre, is re- 
moved by a decorticating machine. You will note 
its fine creamy color and its splendid flavor. The 
color is due to nature. The leaden gray color of the 
average white pepper is the result of a bleaching 
process with lime. 

CATSUP. 

The law permits the use of coal tar dyes, ben- 
zoate of soda, tomato pulp, and artificial color in 
making catsup. We do not. 

MINCE MEAT. 

The law permits the use of the skins and cores 
of the canning factory and the rejected currants 
and raisins of the fruit jobber in making commercial 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 229 

mince meat. It also permits the use of aluminum 
sulphate, benzoate of soda and sulphurous acid in 
the mince meat. We do not. The package in which 
the chef receives the mince meat or any other chem- 
ically treated food, must be labelled under the law, 
but the chef is not obliged to label the pies or the 
dish containing the chemically treated food. This 
fact should be realized. 

DRIED FRUITS. 

We serve the finest dried prunes, raisins, cur- 
rants and citron in our various dishes because they 
are dried by nature's methods. We do not serve 
dried peaches, pears, apricots or apples, because they 
are treated with sulphurous acid for a more sightly 
color, and they also take on 15% moisture which 
sells at fruit prices. Until these dried fruits go 
back to the old fashioned method, we will not serve 
them in our Pure Food Restaurant. 

MOLASSES. 

All New Orleans Molasses is bleached and pre- 
served with sulphur dioxide. We will not use it. In- 
stead we go to Barbadoes for our molasses, which is 
free from chemical treatment. It is darker than the 
New Orleans product, but it is pure and its flavor is 
delicious. Wherever we use molasses in cooking or 
baking we employ the Barbadoes molasses. 

CONSERVES. 

Jams and jellies for tarts, layer cakes, etc., and 
the jellies served with meats are prepared for res- 
taurant use from glucose, apple-stock, apple juice, 
prepared from apple waste, phosphoric acid or tar- 
taric acid with benzoate of soda. The package when 
it reaches the chef is always marked "compound," 
and bears a label indicating the presence of the arti- 
ficial color and chemical preservative employed. This 



230 STARVING AMERICA 

secret knowledge never filters out into the dining 
room. 

We employ no compound jams or jellies. Our 
jams are made, pound for pound, of fresh fruit and 
such sugar as we can get. We use no canned stock 
or barrel stock. Our jellies are made from the 
freshly expressed juice of fresh ripe fruit and sugar. 

GELATINE POWDERS. 

We do not employ Jelly Powder in the prepara- 
tion of our foods. Gelatine is not a food. It is an 
artificial product prepared by chemical treatment 
from the bones, sinews and hides of animals. When 
finished it has no color, no flavor and no odor. All 
these accidents are conferred upon gelatine by chem- 
ical processes. We admit that gelatine dishes look 
nice, but food is not a matter of nicety. Anything 
bordering on sham is kept out of our dining rooms 
on principle. 

MARASCHINO CHERRIES. 

Maraschino cherries are first bleached with sul- 
phurous acid to remove the freckles. They are then 
dyed with aniline like a feather or a ribbon and 
then preserved with benzoate. For this reason we 
do not use maraschino cherries. 

CAKES. 

Our cakes contain no **egg color." 

BAKING POWDER. 

It is legal to use calcium acid phosphate and 
aluminum sulphate in the manufacture of baking 
powder. We prefer cream of tartar baking powder 
and stick to it. 

OLIVE OIL. 
The absence of free fatty acid is the test by which 
the quality of olive oil is determined. If the oil ia 
pressed from olives gathered from the ground 



AN IDEAL RESTAURANT 231 

bruised olives, or if some of the olives are beginning 
to decay, the oil produced from such olives will con- 
tain free fatty acid and the presence or absence of 
free fatty acid is the absolute indicator of the char- 
acter of olives employed in the production of the oiL 
Fully matured hand-selected olives^ properly 
pressed and properly safe-guarded from contamina- 
tion will produce oil which emerges from the chemi- 
cal test with a perfect pedigree. Our olive oil must 
not only defy the chemical test for free fatty acid, 
but it must also resist the test for cotton seed oil. 

MAPLE SYRUP. 

We serve no mixture of cane sugar and maple 
sugar. The so-called pancake syrup used in restaur- 
ants and hotels, contains 85% cane syrup and 15% 
maple syrup. Our maple syrup is the pure sap of 
the maple tree, boiled in open kettles to the con- 
sistency of syrup; nothing is added in the form oi 
chemical preservatives, filler or dilution of any 
kind whatsoever. 

These brief outlines indicate the extraordinarily 
high ideals which we have set out to realize in the 
conduct of this Pure Food Restaurant 

It will discriminate not only in purity but in 
quality. 

A food may be pure and still be scarcely fit to eat. 
A piece of shin meat from the leg of an ox is just as 
pure as a porterhouse steak. A crab apple is just as 
pure as a greening or a northern spy. 

Pure and good are two words which in the food 
world should never be separated. In our Pure Food 
Restaurant, it is our purpose always to unite them 
and keep them together. 

Where in the United States or Europe is there 
another eating house modeled on such lines ? 



232 STARVING AMERICA 



COPYRIGHT. 191J. BT THB ONTT' f^lTNT 

IMERCIAL ADVERTISER ASffN. ^J^^ ■*-* V/ILll X . 



COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER ASS'N. 



SECRETS OF FOOD 
ADULTERATION BY 
BAKERS REVEALED 

iSow Two "Innooant Grocers" From Carbon- 
dale, Pa„ Went to the Show at the Garden 
and Asked a Few Questions— How the An- 
swers Came Promptly Concerning the Use 
of Queer Matter in Cooking. 

ANCIENT EGGS AVAILABLE 

IN MORE WAYS THANONE 



Demonstrators at Public Exhibition Explain 
the Mysteries of What Is Just as Good as 
Butter— Also Fancy "Icing" for Cakes and 
the Use of Alcohol— Light on the Meaning 
of That Label ^'Guaranteed Under the 
Pure Food andDrugs Act " 

Heading in the N. Y. Globe of the expose of the 
Bakers' and Confectioners* methods. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

STARTING A BAKERY. 

New York bakers are selling their customers pies 
and cakes containing benzoate of soda and artificial 
colorings. They are using dried eggs — in many in- 
stances "rots and spots" — artificial flavorings, and 
their pie and cake fillings are made up of fresh and 
dried fruits that have become so spoiled that they 
are unsalable. 

Almost anything is good enough to go into a ba- 
ker's pie. Spoiled canned goods, called "swell 
heads," because fermentation bulges out the cans, 
make excellent fillings for pies, and there is no use 
in paying regular rates for good raisins when you 
can wash out mouldy and wormy ones and nobody 
ever will know the difference. 

All this and more was told in confidence by 
agents of bakers' supply houses to a reporter for The 
Globe who visited the Baking and Candy Show at 
Madison Square Garden, New York, with Alfred W. 
McCann, a pure food expert and member of the vigi- 
lance committee both of the national and local adver- 
tising clubs. 

Mr. McCann and The Globe reporter went as gro- 
cers from Carbondale, Pa., who knew nothing about 
the baking business, but thought it would be a good 
department to add to the grocery business. 

Eagerly the salesmen in the different booths at 
the Bakers' Show dilated upon the profits of the busi- 



234 STARVING AMERICA 

ness. All were agreed that no baker ever used many- 
pure products in his goods. 

'There isn't a baker in the United States," said 
one man, "who isn't using goods that contain *ben- 
zo.' " 

"Benzo" is the popular contraction for benzoate 
of soda, the preservative against which Dr. Harvey 
W. Wiley has waged such relentless war. 

"I understand," Mr. McCann said, ''that we can 
use all our spoiled fruits in making pies, that we 
won't need to throw away unsalable stuff." 

"Certainly," said the salesman. "All you have to 
do is to wash them out a little and boil them up and 
they are all right." 

"Do you mean that any kind of spoiled fruit is 
good enough for pies?" the reporter asked. 

"Almost any kind," the salesman answered. 
"Most bakers go over the bad fruit and pick out 
some that is too far gone, of course, but the major- 
ity of your unsalable stuff will do for pies." 

The salesman showed a bottle of "butter flavor- 
ing" that looked like partly refined petroleum. "No 
baker ever uses butter in his cooking," he said. "All 
you need to do to make twelve pounds of cooking 
butter is to take a dollar's worth of lard compound, 
not pure lard, and mix it with half a cent's worth 
of 'butter flavor.' Then you have twelve pounds of 
cooking butter." 

He also had a powder out of which cream puff 
filler was made. If you make your own you have to 
use eggs which cost, the salesman said, 25 cents a 
dozen now. These are low grade eggs. The powder 
is made of dried eggs that cost far less than 25 cents 
a dozen. 

Then you can buy icing for cakes, all ready to be 
mixed with sugar and water. There is orange icing 



STARTING A BAKERY 235 

of a deep red ; chocolate, nearly black. These colors 
are made deep so that a little will go a long way. 
The bakers know that when a person eats a cake that 
looks like chocolate he will think he is eating a choc- 
olate cake. Just a touch o:^ flavoring is all that is 
necessary. Gloss and color are most necessary. 

''What about the pure food laws?" asked Mr. Mc- 
Cann. "They're pretty strict in Carbondale." 

"No need to worry/' said the salesman. "We la- 
bel everything that is artificially colored or that con- 
tains preservatives. Everything we have is guaran- 
teed under the pure food laws." 

"Guaranteed?" 

"That means that it complies with the law — it's 
labelled imitation, you know." 

"The law doesn't guarantee anything, does it?" 

"Oh, no, but the word sounds good." 

"But will we have to label our pies and cakes 
when we put benzoate of soda and artificial colorings 
in them?" 

"Certainly not. You don't need to worry about 
the pure food law. We label all our stuff." 

"Then you don't have to inform the consumer 
that you are using benzoate of soda and artificial col- 
orings ?" Mr. McCann asked. 

"Certainly not. The stuff is marked in the orig- 
inal packages, that's all that's necessary. You don't 
have to hang up any sign telling the people what's 
in your pies. You know what's in them. That's 
all the law demands." 

The reporter said it certainly was, and inquired 
whether spoiled pumpkins could be put into pies 
without fear of detection. 

The salesman admitted it was done often, but 
the spoiled fruits were generally used. 



236 STARVING AMERICA 

The salesman said there was no way in which a 
10-cent pie could be made to cost more than 3^ 
cents. 

There were on exhibit buckets of mince meat, 
imitation eggs, imitation cream, imitation baking 
powder, cake filling, all kinds of pie filling, and imi- 
tation flavoring extracts. 

Here you could buy mincemeat at 9 cents a 
pound, add 100% water or cider, and cut it to 4^ 
cents a pound, according to a salesman. This is all 
ready to be put into the pies, so is the pie filling, 
which comes in all flavors. It never spoils, the sales- 
man said, and it is labelled with the benzoate of soda 
label. Of course the customer doesn't know he is 
eating ''benzo." Unless he goes into the back room 
of the bakery and looks at the kegs, he is likely to 
think he is buying fresh fruit pies. 

*'We had a little scare in New York a year or so 
ago," said the salesman, "and some of the bakers 
were scared and began hanging up signs and clean- 
ing up, but it all blew over. If you are afraid of the 
inspectors you can hang up a little sign saying that 
some of your goods are artificially preserved. It 
doesn't mean anything to your customers and com- 
plies with the law." 

The salesman admitted that all his goods were 
preserved with "benzo." **You've got to do it," he 
said. *'I know one fellow who gets around it by doc- 
toring his stuff with grain alcohol, the stuff they 
rub on you in a Turkish bath. Think of putting that 
stuff in your stomach." 

Over in the corner were soda fountain syrups and 
fruits beautifully colored. You could buy a powder 
which would keep ice cream from melting unless ex- 
posed to heat over 72 degrees. 



STARTING A BAKERY 237 

Down the aisle were candies, the penny kind, 
meant for children, painted in all sorts of colors. 

*'It would be better for the children to eat the 
heads of their painted wooden soldiers," said Mr. 
McCann, ''than to eat that stuff." 

THE NEXT DAY. 

The next day after the dealers in bakers' supplies 
had read the story in the Globe, they were up in 
arms, denouncing as "malicious lies" the statements 
in the Globe of how spoiled fruits were used, em- 
balmed with benzoate of soda and colored with coal 
tar dyes. So once more the reporter visited the 
plant. When pinned down to point out exact state- 
ments that are false, the manufacturers practically 
admitted their truth, but complained that the "tone" 
was hostile — and added that there was no use of 
stirring up things and worrying the public. "Be- 
sides," they said, "benzoate of soda and coal tar 
dyes never hurt anybody." 

However, the manufacturers of goods that are 
not artificially preserved and colored take great care 
to announce that fact, while the manufacturers 
who do use benzoate of soda and artificial colors 
do their best to conceal the fact. Firms using ben- 
zoate of soda cannot do business in Indiana or Flor- 
ida, as the use of that drug as a preservative is pro- 
hibited in those states. The members of one firm 
objected to the reporter's use of the word "imita- 
tion." Those things were "compounds," not "imita- 
tions," they said. The reporter pointed to a can of 
Creamaline. "That is not imitation cream," said 
the dealer, "that is a 'bodifier'." The salesmen gen- 
erally repudiated or denied the statements of the 
day before. The dealer at last exclaimed, "Nowa- 
days the bakers are frightened to death if you say 
benzoate of soda. It is all because such men as you, 



238 STARVING AMERICA 

McCann, have stirred them up. You are a public 
nuisance. I believe the state law is unconstitutional. 
If you will start in business, as you pretended you 
were going to do, and get arrested for selling our 
goods, we will defend you and beat the benzoate 
question." 

"Fll do it," said Mr. McCann. "If you won, it 
would be the greatest advertisement you could ask 
for. If you'll stand by that statement, I'll be the 
subject for a test case as soon as you like." 

Another member of the firm backed down. "We 
wouldn't defend you, but we'll defend any of our 
regular customers who get into trouble by selling our 
goods." 

The president of the State Association of Master 
Bakers came forward with a denial that they used 
spoiled goods or benzoate of soda preservative in 
their pies. 

Another dealer demanded to be shown the clerk 
who told how to use spoiled fruits in pies. "If we 
pointed him out," the reporter asked, "would you 
discharge him?" 

"I don't know what I would do," was the an- 
swer. "But your article is a pack of lies." 

Another dealer said hotly, "Why didn't you say 
you were a reporter instead of sneaking round and 
posing as a grocer?" 

"Then," said the reporter, as he turned to go, 
"you don't make the same statements to newspaper 
men that you do to prospective customers?" 

AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. WILEY. 

The greatest of the battlers in the cause of pure 
food. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, sees victory ahead for 
the cause. He believes that when Woodrow Wilson 
becomes president the food adulterators and mis- 
branders will be put to rout. 



STARTING A BAKERY 239 

"What do you expect the new administration to 
do in the way of aiding the pure food cause ?" he was 
asked by a Globe reporter. 

"It is my hope," he answered, "that all the re- 
strictions and gags that have been in force through- 
out the last two administrations will be removed, 
and that the law will be allowed to take its course, 
as intended by Congress. 

"I hope that violators of the pure food laws will 
be taken to court and punished, and that there will 
be no more boards and referees to act as a buffer 
between the food manufacturer and the law." 

"The Remsen board was dealt a crushing blow 
by Justice Anderson in the suit against the state of 
Indiana to force it to permit the sale of products 
preserved with benzoate of soda. Justice Anderson 
said the board didn't have one iota of evidence that 
benzoate of soda was harmless, and the suit was dis- 
missed. 

"I hope Mr. Wilson will restore the authority 
taken from the Bureau of Chemistry and give the 
officials a chance to enforce the law in the way Con- 
gress intended it should be enforced. 

"The present state of affairs is the greatest dis- 
grace ever attached to a free people, and the exist- 
ence of these conditions is due solely to the fact that 
officials are protecting the criminals who sell mis- 
branded and adulterated food. This stuff loaded 
with glucose and benzoate of soda is not fit to feed 
to fishes." 

"How did the food manufacturers get such 
power?" Dr. Wiley was asked. 

"The same way all big industries get power." 

"Do you know of any instances of where food 
manufacturers contributed to campaign funds?" 



240 STARVING AMERICA 

*lf they didn't contribute they should have, for 
they have made millions of dollars by feeding these 
concoctions to the people." 

"Such conditions as were shown by the exposure 
at the Baking and Candy Show could not exist," Dr. 
Wiley said, **if the high officials were not corrupt." 



^aah anh BruQ ^F^iartmpnt 



tate of ®exaB tom h*jo~n»o», 

Austin 

HOV. 15, 1912. 



Mr. Alfred W. McCann, 
o/o The Globe, 

Rew York, N. Y. 
Dear Sir: 

I wish to congratulate you on the 
«x5)0Bure of indecent nethoda in the bedcery businesa. 
?rom such a suggestion, this department will Investigatd 
the whole bakery business in Texas. 

YOtlTB 




POpO/ARD DRUG COMMISSlOHfifi. 
JSA 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY. 

This chapter presents facts concerning ^the prin- 
cipal sixteen elements found in natural food, and in 
the body of man, which every physician should 
know at once. With these facts before him, he will 
realize that the present food situation is murderous 
and his medical associations will demand reform, as 
soon as the individual begins to appreciate the 
monstrous character of the food manufacturer's de- 
fiance of the very laws with which the physician is 
so much concerned. 

While this chapter is not written for the lay- 
reader, and can be passed over without losing the 
meaning of any of the other chapters, it would 
be well for her who is approaching that most sacred 
experience of womanhood, to read it again and 
again, for after all, the conditions which these pages 
uncover, center around this chapter. 

The organized club women of America could do 
no better thing than to begin a crusade, with this 
chapter as its foundation. 

Following is a description of the sixteen ele- 
ments of which the human body is composed. 
Taken singly, the average man and woman is famil- 
iar with them all, and sees and understands their 
use in the commonplace circumstances of life. Ap- 
parently it is only when they are assembled, that 
their technical names awe the understanding, and 
make them appear hopelessly mysterious. They are 



242 STARVING AMERICA 

in reality very simple, and when briefly described, 
all the difficulties usually associated with them 
quickly melt away. So, we will take them one by 
one, and learn their offices as familiar and intimate 
friends, working constantly, day and night, asleep 
or awake, for our good. The great thing that we 
must know about them, is how to safeguard them 
from unfriendly hands. 

POTASSIUM. 

Potassium is found most abundantly in the soft 
solid tissues, in the corpuscles of the blood, the 
muscle protoplasm, and in the fluids secreted by some 
of the glandular organs such as milk. Whereas 
sodiums occurs chiefly in the form of chloride in 
the blood and other fluids, potassium occurs chiefly 
as phosphate in the cells. This indicates that the 
cells pick and choose in obedience to a fixed law, 
and select such elements as are necessary to their 
normal life and functioning. This selective action 
is inhibited if the cells cannot find the material to 
be selected. How can they find it when it is largely 
or totally removed from food? Without the potas- 
sium and other salts normal osmotic pressure could 
not be maintained in the tissues, and the body fluids 
in which the organs are bathed would lack their 
characteristic influence upon the elasticity and irri- 
tability of muscle and nerve. Moreover, the acid 
and alkaline digestive juices and other secretions 
could not find the bases on which they are formed, 
and the internal fluids could not maintain the neu- 
trality or slight alkalescence necessary to body 
equilibrium. Potassium and sodium antagonize 
and balance the calcium in tissues and fluids. The 
alternate contractions and relaxations of the heart 
movement depend upon the potassium, sodium and 
calcium in the fluid which bathes the heart muscle. 



FOR PHYSICIAHS ONLY 243 

What food industry has the right to interfere with 
the presence of these salts which nature so wonder- 
fully prepares in the normal food of animal and 
man? 

If nature does not set the proper standard why 
is it that man's artificial attempt to change nature's 
formula always results in disaster to the animal 
fed upon his juggled product? Every dietetic ex- 
periment ever undertaken proves this. 

Potassium is a mineral so widely distributed in 
nature that no animal or edible plant has life or 
can have life without it. 

Notwithstanding its generous diffusion over the 
whole earth, it never occurs uncombined, or in a 
free state. It is found in many combinations with 
both organic and inorganic acids, but never pure. 
There is no such thing as pure potassium outside 
the chemical laboratory, just as there is no such 
thing as pure sugar or starch in nature. 

When separated by the skill of the chemist from 
any of its many combined states, it is silvery-white 
in color, has a decided metallic lustre, and becomes, 
like pure arsenic, a deadly agent of destruction. 

There is only one metal, lithium, which is lighter 
in weight. At ordinary temperature, it is soft 
enough to be cut with ease with a table knife, but 
at the freezing point of water, it is quite brittle, 
and breaks into crystals. 

In perfectly pure dry air, it undergoes no 
change, but in ordinary air it quickly unites with 
hydrogen and carbon, and becomes coated with a 
film of potassium hydrate and carbonate. 

It has such a greedy and insatiable affinity for 
water, that when the two are brought together a 
wonderful phenomenon is immediately observed. 
The potassium undergoes almost instantaneous de- 



244 STARVING AMERICA 

composition, and sputters and hisses over the sus- 
face of the water on which it floats with such liber- 
ation of energy that great heat evolves. This heat 
is sufficient to set fire to the escaping hydrogen, 
which bursts into a beautiful lilac flame. 

With two single exceptions, caesium and rubidi- 
um, potassium is the most electropositive element in 
nature. It will doubtless be proved before many 
years that its electrolytical influence on the human 
body is one of the most vital processes of life. 

The layman is familiar with potassium in many 
forms, yet feels that it is too big for him to grapple 
with, and in consequence makes no effort to appre- 
ciate its importance in his diet. He knows that 
chloride of potassium is used in fertilizing the soil ; 
that chlorate of potassium is used in the manufac- 
ture of explosives ; that nitrate of potassium is used 
in medicine; that carbonate of potassium is used in 
making soap and glass ; that cyanide of potassium, a 
violent poison, is used in photography. These 
things present no difficulty to his understanding, 
but for some strange reason he remains indifferent 
to the necessity of potassium in his food. 

Potassium in several forms is absolutely neces- 
sary to life, and yet in its pure state it would de- 
stroy life. Nature for this reason abhors pure po- 
tassium, and will not tolerate it, except under arti- 
ficial circumstances. That food factories have a 
right to remove the potassium salts from the food 
of man, is one of the many evidences of our na- 
tional ignorance in the presence of life and death. 
PHOSPHORUS. 

Without the phosphorus compounds, there would 
be no living cell in the body. Sherman makes this 
statement: 'Tossibly because the crudity of the 
views formerly held and still sometimes met (espe- 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 245 

cially in fraudulent advertisements of proprietary 
foods) tended to bring the subject into ridicule, 
the study of the phosphates, and other phosphorus 
compounds in food and nutrition was very generally 
neglected. Recently, however, the significance of 
phsophorus in the growth, development and func- 
tions of the organism is at last being adequately 
recognized." 

The investigations of Forbes, Ohio Experiment 
Station, and Hart, Wisconsin Experimental Station, 
indicate that much of the mal-nutrition is not due to 
a low protein diet, but to a deficiency of phosphorus 
and calcium in the food. 

Phosphorus is found in the body as phosphorized 
proteins called nucleo-proteins existing in the cells 
and tissues. True phospho-proteins exist in casein 
and ovovitellin. In brain and nerve substances 
and also to some extent in other tissues, the phos- 
phorus appears as phosphorized fats termed leci- 
thins. Egg yolk is particularly rich in this form of 
phosphorus, so are whole grains and legumes. Less 
highly organized forms of phosphorus are utilized 
by the body as phytin compounds, or phytates. 
Wheat, corn, rice, barley, and oats, in their natural 
unrefined state contain phosphorus in this form in 
abundant quantities. In the fluids and soft tissues 
of the body, the phosphorus is found in an inor- 
ganic form as potassium phosphate. In the bone 
structure, the phosphorus is found as calcium phos- 
phate. Maxwell, in observing germinating seeds, 
and developing chic embryos, found that in the con- 
struction of the tissues of the growing vegetable or 
animal organism, the phosphorized fats played a 
most important part. Steinitz, Zadik, and Leip- 
ziger, discovered that these various phosphorus 
compounds could not be substituted for each other. 



246 STARVING AMERICA 

Simple proteins with inorganic phosphates, do not 
make a substitute for phospho-proteins. Rohmann 
showed that the phosphorized proteins furnished 
the material for tissue growth. Gumpert and Ehr- 
stom found that phosphorus equilibrium was main- 
tained in experiments upon men, when consumed in 
the form of phospho-proteins, casein, whereas, 
when taken as dicalcium phosphate or as the potas- 
sium phosphate of meat, the same quantity of phos- 
phorus would not serve the needs of the body. 

The phosphorus of wheat bran occurs chiefly in 
the form of phytates. These phytates are easily ex- 
tracted, and readily absorbed in the digestive tract. 
When bran is leached in distilled water, the phos- 
phorus is extracted. Such bran fed to cows, pro- 
duces constipation, exploding the old time theory 
that the intestines were ''scoured" by the coarse 
particles of bran, thus promoting peristalsis. Not 
the coarse particles, but the phosphorus contained in 
them is responsible for the gentle laxative effects 
produced by the bran. 

The modern wheat miller, who produces refined 
patent flour, points to the statements of several 
chemists, indicating that refined patent flour is a 
more wholesome product for babes and invalids, 
than the meal made from the whole grain. 

The writer has proved the folly of these state- 
ments on his own and other children. 

Even when fasting, the phosphorus compounds 
of the body are broken down, and eliminated, show- 
ing the absurdity of removing these phosphorus 
compounds by mechanical processes from our foods. 
They are needed in the functioning of all the organs, 
and when not present, the bones and tissues, yes, 
the blood itself, are called upon to supply the de- 
ficiency. 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 247 

The wheat, barley and corn mills of the West, the 
rice and corn mills of the South and Southwest, and 
the refined sugar and glucose industries producing 
their degerminated, dephosphorized, refined pro- 
ducts, go hand in hand with malnutrition to the un- 
timely graves of America. 

The modern baked bean as usually sold in cans, 
is devitalized by the absurd processes through which 
it goes, in a thoughtless effort of the food manufac- 
turer to rob it of its phosphorus. The beans are 
soaked over night in cold water. The excess water 
containing valuable solubles is then thrown off. The 
beans are then put in copper kettles, and boiled for 
30 minutes. The phosphorized proteins rise to the 
top as a "scum" which is skimmed off, and poured 
into the sewer. The beans are then drained, and 
the chef stands idly by, while their rich vitality is 
poured down the waste pipe. The denatured product 
is then put into cans, sealed and cooked in a ster- 
ilizer for two hours, after which the so-called 
**baked" bean robbed of its phosphorus is put on the 
market. 

Hart, in feeding hogs, in experiments conducted 
in the Wisconsin experiment station, found that 
1.12 grams of phosphorus per day, was just about 
sufficient for the hogs', until they attained a weight 
of about 85 pounds, after which this quantity was 
clearly insufficient for the needs of the animal. 

Sherman makes this statment: "1.12 grams 
phosphorus, would hardly seem a desirable amount 
for a growing child of the same size, or for a fully 
grown man or woman." 

Sherman, Mettler and Sinclair, in bulletin 227, 
Office of Experiment Stations, United States De- 
partment of Agriculture, report a comparison of 
the amount of phosphorus contained in the food of 



248 STARVING AMERICA 

typical American families, showing that a freely 
chosen diet of our denatured food products, does not 
furnish much more than 1.12 grams of phosphorus 
estimated as 2.75 grams, P2O5. These investiga- 
tions were carried out in 20 American dietaries, 
including a lawyer's family in Pittsburg, a teacher's 
family in Indiana, a school superintendent's family 
in Chicago, a teacher's family in New York, a 
student's club in Tennessee, 115 women students in 
Ohio, a carpet dyer's family in New York, a sewing 
woman's family in New York, a house decorator's 
family in Pittsburg, a glass blower's family in 
Pittsburg, two mill workers' families in Pittsburg, 
a mechanic's family in Knoxville, Tenn., 30 lumber 
men in Maine, a farmer's family in Connecticut, a 
farmer's and mechanic's family in Tennessee, 13 
men students, 5 women students, and one child in 
Knoxville, Tenn., boarding house, two negro farm- 
ers' families in Alabama. 

The study continued 58 days, and took the aver- 
age from 12,238 meals taken by men, and 793 meals 
taken by women. Speaking of these experiments, 
Sherman declares: "These results indicate that 
present food habits lead to a deficiency of phosphor- 
us compounds, and it is not improbable that many 
cases of malnutrition are really due to an inadequate 
supply of phosphorus compounds." 

Phosphorus like potassium is not found in nature 
in a free state, but is always combined with some 
other substance, such as oxygen, calcium and mag- 
nesium. No form of animal or vegetable life can be 
found, in which phosphorus does not play an indis- 
pensable part. 

When artificially purified, it is semi-transparent 
and colorless. At ordinary temperature it is soft 
and easily cut. By the aid of heat, it is soluble In 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 249 

fixed and volatile oils, and is exceedingly inflam- 
able. At ordinary temperature it undergoes slow 
combustion, emitting a peculiar white vapor, which 
is luminous in the dark and which possesses an odor 
quite similar to garlic. The slightest degree of heat 
is sufficient to set it on fire. In fact, it is so subtle, 
that gentle pressure between the fingers or slight 
friction of any kind kindles it readily. 

When set on fire, it burns rapidly, emitting a 
beautiful white light and intense heat. In pure 
oxygen its combustion is very rapid, and its light 
far more vivid. The perfect combustion of phos- 
phorus forms another substance, which is called 
phosphorus pentoxid, a white solid that readily 
takes up water, thus becoming phosphoric acid. 
This is a colorless, odorless syrup with an intensely 
sour taste, and is used by jam and jelly makers with. 
the permission of the law, although it is a deadly 
poison. It is also used in the manufacture of soft 
drinks. Phosphorus in this form is not the phos- 
phorus required by the human or animal body. 
Its use is criminal and must be stopped. 

The fumes of phosphorus cause necrosis of the 
bones, and are responsible for the dread disease 
known as "phossy jaw" among the workers in the 
phosphorus match factories. 

Mixed with a paste, it is used for the destruc- 
tion of vermin, rats, mice, cockroaches, etc., which 
it quickly poisons. In its properly combined and 
natural states, as found in the food of man, it is 
one of the most necessary elements. Like the salts 
of potassium, it is largely removed by the food 
manufacturer from much of our diet, particularly 
from our bread, bread stuffs, cereals and patent 
foods of the refined type. 



250 STARVING AMERICA 

CALCIUM. 

The most striking function of the salts of cal- 
cium in the body is observed in their effect upon 
the coagulation of the blood, and the contractility 
of the muscular tissue of the heart. An artificial 
solution of blood "ash/' containing the small but 
necessary percentage of calcium, potassium and 
sodium will keep a heart beating normally for a 
long time, after it has been removed from the body 
of the animal. If the sodium and potassium are 
removed from the solution, the calcium will cause 
a condition of tonic contraction. If the calcium is 
removed, the sodium and potassium cause the heart 
muscle to relax. When present together in proper 
proportions, the muscle relaxes, and contracts in 
rythmical order. Meltzer states : "Calcium is cap- 
able of correcting the disturbances of the inorganic 
equilibrium in the animal body, whatever the devia- 
tions from the normal may be. Any abnormal effect 
which sodium, potassium or magnesium may pro- 
duce in the direction of increased or decreased irri- 
tability, calcium is capable of re-establishing the 
normal equilibrim." 

When fasting, calcium salts are lost through the 
intestinal wall proving that the body must have a 
constantly renewed supply of the mineral for its 
normal life processes. 

As the bones and teeth make good the loss of 
calcium from the soft tissues and blood when no 
food is taken at all so do they also make good the 
loss when food deficient in calcium is consumed. 

The injurious results that follow a calcium free 
diet is more pronounced on growing animals than 
on those full-grown. Ninety-nine per cent of the 
calcium appropriated by the growing animal goes to 
its bones and teeth. An abundance of calcium for 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 251 

the growing bones is thus an evident need. In its 
mother's womb, the growing child derives its cal- 
cium from the mother's food, provided the calcium 
has not been removed from her food. When that 
happens, as it always does on a diet consisting 
largely of white bread, polished rice, modern com 
meal, glucose and sugar, the mother's bones and 
teeth are called upon to make up the deficiency. 
This deficiency, with the appalling results on the 
future health of the mother, is entirely preventable 
and uncalled for. Natural food makes such defi- 
ciency impossible. White bread, biscuits, crackers, 
cakes and all other forms of denatured grains and 
sugars kill mother and child before their time, or 
so rob them of normal vitality as to make their 
lives burdensome, inefficient and miserable. 

Men who serve as subjects of calcium experiments 
do not need as much calcium as growing children. 
Any attempt to establish the minimum calcium re- 
quirement of the growing child from experiments 
made on adults will result disastrously to the child. 
Refined sugar and glucose are calcium free and cal- 
cium-hungry. They not only do not supply calcium 
to the body, but they take it from the body. Pre- 
scribe foods robbed of their calcium to the child, 
and in addition recommend the generous use of 
refined sugars and candy in the child's diet, and our 
15,000,000 physically defective school children will 
become 10,000,000 physically defective men and 
women, and 5,000,000 of them will never become 
men and women at all. 

Undenatured grains, parsnips, carrots, turnips, 
egg yolk and pure milk with plenty of greens, (in 
their own juice if cooked and the same applies to 
the vegetables mentioned) provide the richest cal- 
cium foods. Those who are to become mothers 



252 STARVING AMERICA 

should know this if they would escape the disorders 
now generally looked upon as inevitable with child 
birth. 

Calcium is a metal having a light yellow color, 
and a brilliant lustre. It is about as hard as gold. 
It oxidizes readily in moist air, and at a red heat 
burns vividly, forming quick lime. In combination 
with water, the quick lime forms slaked lime. 

Like potassium and phosphorus, it is never found 
in nature in its pure state, but always in compounds 
widely distributed. Marble and chalk are simply 
calcium carbonate. Gypsum is simply calcium sul- 
phate. The calcium light of the theatre is produced 
by turning a stream of oxygen and a stream of hy- 
drogen in a state of ignition upon a lump of cal- 
cium. 

Most people are perfectly familiar with its uses 
outside their own bodies, but do not realize that 
without calcium there can be no vegetable or animal 
life. "Rickets" is simply deranged or impaired cal- 
cium metabolism. 

The food manufacturer does not know that he is 
committing a sin against nature and a crime against 
the race when he removes the calcium from our 
food. 

IRON. 

The inorganic iron of some drinking water and 
the inorganic medicinal iron prescribed to the ane- 
mic do not replace the complex organic iron com- 
pounds of greens, egg yolk, whole grains, or vege- 
tables. 

Socin fed two groups of mice, giving food to one 
group free from iron, plus medicinal iron in the 
form of inorganic iron chloride. To the other group, 
he gave the same iron-free food plus the addition 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 253 

of egg yolk containing the iron in a highly or- 
ganized form. 

All of the mice on the artificial iron diet were 
dead before the thirty-third day of the experiment. 

The other mice fed with iron as prepared by 
nature, not only lived, but gained in weight. 

Lelensky fed dogs upon polished rice, from 
which the iron compounds are removed, in order 
to determine the effect of such iron-free diet upon 
the hemoglobin content of the blood. In one dog, 
the percentage of hemoglobin fell in nine days from 
18.5 to 13.1; in another from 14.8 to 11.3 in six 
days. The anemia became more pronounced as the 
polished rice diet was continued, and on the eigh- 
teenth day, the dog died, yet the rice millers of the 
United States are now circulating literature among 
the grocers of the country denouncing th^ "fanatic- 
ism" of those who urge the use of rice as nature 
prepares it. These millers say in their circular: 
"The people of the United States, in eating rice, by 
the addition of a little gravy or butter more than 
replace the protein and fat removed from the grain 
by milling." 

They persist in fogging the situation by refer- 
ring to "protein" and "fat" as the missing links, and 
do not show that "gravy" or "butter" supplies the 
organic iron, phosphorus and other priceless miner- 
al compounds of the whole grain. Dogs and chil- 
dren will die just as quickly on a diet of polished 
rice with butter and gravy as on a diet of plain 
polished rice. On a diet of natural rice they will 
thrive. 

It has been established that the iron demanded 
by the body-processes of oxydation, secretion,, re- 
production and growth must be obtained from food- 
iron, not from medicine or mineral salts. The wan- 



254 STARVING AMEHTCA 

ton removal of this food-iron from our cereals, 
wheat, corn, rice, barley, sugar and glucose, by re- 
fining processes, and the loss of much of our vege- 
table iron by ignorant home cooking cannot be justi- 
fied by any food industry, however great its invest- 
ments in dollars and cents. The national health is 
of greater value than all the gold of the world. 

Henry C. Sherman, Columbia University, shows 
the iron content estimated in milligrams per 100 
grams of whole wheat as 5.2. The same figures for 
white, denatlired, patent flour are 1.5, a tragic loss 
that no ""gravy" or "butter" can ever replace in 
the bodies of our anemic women and children. 

Because fruits and vegetables contain a high 
water content, and low proportions of protein and 
fat, some dietitians hold them in low regard, for- 
getting that they are important sources of food- 
iron. Because the small traces of iron in meat have 
a distinctly lower value than the iron compounds 
of eggs, whole grains, vegetables and fruits. Van 
Norden points the folly of relying upon meat as a 
source of iron for young children. He advocates a 
liberal use of meat in the diet of the adult, but no 
meat for the child. He says: "As far as our 
children are concerned, we believe we could do bet- 
ter by following the diet of the most rigid vege- 
tarians than by feeding the children as though they 
were carnivora, according to the bad custom which 
still prevails. If we limit the child's supply of fruit 
and vegetable iron we cause a certain sluggishness 
of blood formation and an entire lack of reserve 
iron, such as is normally found in the liver, spleen 
and bone marrow of healthy, well-nourished in- 
dividuals." 

Sherman reports an experimental dietary study 
made in New York City in which it was found that 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 255 

a free use of fresh vegetables, whole wheat bread, 
and the cheaper sorts of fruits, with milk but with- 
out meat, resulted in a gain of 30 per cent In the 
iron content of the diet, while the protein fuel 
value, and cost remained practically the same as in 
the ordinary mixed diet obtained under the game 
market conditions. The writer's children, with the 
exception of chicken once a month, have never eaten 
meat or asked for it, although the adult members 
of his family eat it twice a week. 

Herbivorous animals get more iron in their diet 
than meat-eating animals, and not only live longer, 
but according to Sherman, are also less liable to 
anemia. It must be noted that these grass and 
grain eating animals get all the iron of their diet, 
whereas the human animal not only loses the greater 
part of it in his refined wheat, rice and corn, but 
by throwing the water in which his vegetables are 
cooked down the waste pipe, he loses another large 
percentage of it. The animal fed on such refined 
grains and badly cooked vegetables, dies like the 
human animal of any disease which happens to take 
possession of its enfeebled tissues or impoverished 
blood. 

Iron IS found nearly chemically pure in a few 
places, but chemically pure iron is obtained only by 
artifice. It was described by Berzelious in that 
state, as very nearly as white as silver, and much 
softer than ordinary bar-iron. Its uses are too com- 
mon to receive any attention here, although its ap- 
pearance in the human body is usually overlooked, 
when we think of it in horse shoes, nails, hinges, 
guns and bridges, etc. 

Vegetable or animal life is not possible without 
iron, and yet, notwithstanding the fact that iron is 
introduced only through the medium of food, the 



256 STARVING AMERICA 

food manufacturer assumes that he has a right to 
remove it from his product. 

MANGANESE. 

Manganese has a remarkable affinity for iron, 
and in some respects bears a close resemblance to 
iron, with which it is frequently associated. It 
differs from iron in that while its ores are widely 
distributed, they are only rarely found in great 
quantity in any one locality, whereas iron ore exists 
in abundance in many regions. 

It is employed as an oxidizing agent, and its 
function in the human body is probably very sim- 
ilar to that performed by iron. The physician rec- 
ognizes its necessity, and frequently endeavors to 
introduce it into the body as a tonic. He has diffi- 
culy in doing this, because his manganese does not 
appear in the form in which it is found in natural 
food, and in which it is acceptable to the body. 

The food manufacturer does not understand its 
relationship to normal health, and in consequence 
is not disturbed over its removal from his product, 
notwithstanding the fact that it is one of the prin- 
cipal mineral salts always found in the body of a 
normal animal. 

MAGNESIUM. 

Loew found that magnesium and phosphorus are 
intimately associated in the body, and that the meta- 
bolism of these two elements in plants is closely con- 
nected, magnesium apparently serving as a phos- 
phate carrier in vegetable metabolism just as iron 
serves as an oxygen carrier in animal metabolism. 

Compounds of magnesium are widely distributed 
in nature, and it is estimated that from 5 to 6 per 
cent of the solid material held in solution by the 
water of the ocean is magnesium sulphate, and from 
8 to 11 per cent magnesium chloride. 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 257 

It is a metal of brilliant silver white color, and 
melts at a red heat. Held in the flame of a candle, 
it burns with a dazzlingly white light, and for this 
reason is much employed in the manufacture of 
flash lights for photography in dark places. 

The bones of all animals, and the. seeds of vari- 
ous cereals, contain magnesium in the form of a 
phosphate. Physicians employ magnesium sulphate 
(epsom salts) in medicine. That magnesium in 
spite of the important role it plays in the normal 
functioning of the human body is remove'd by our 
artificial processes of refining food does not seem 
to disturb the food manufacturer unduly. 

SULPHUR. 

Sulphur occurs in all protein food, associated 
with nitrogen, but in different proportions. In 
beans, peas and lentils, the relation is about 50 nit- 
rogen to 1 sulphur; in cheese about 20 nitrogen to 
1 sulphur; in egg albumen about 10 nitrogen to 1 
sulphur. As protein foods, legumes, meat, cheese, 
eggs are broken up in the body and oxidized, the 
sulphur is transformed into sulphuric acid. If this 
sulphuric acid is not instantly neutralized as rapidly 
as it is formed, it destroys the tissues. Under an 
unrefined and natural diet, the body automatically 
controls this formation of sulphuric acid converting 
it into inorganic sulphates, which are thrown off 
for the greater part in the urine. To what extent 
the kidney cells are broken down by modern artifi- 
cial foods, robbed of their natural basic elements, or 
treated with sulphurous acid will never be known. 
California, Louisiana, and all other states using 
SO2 and SO3 in preparing their dried fruits, sweet 
wines and molasses do not know the effects of their 
deadly practices, but our untimely harvest of kid- 
ney diseases is on record. 



258 STARVING AMERICA 

We all know sulphur too well to require its de- 
scription. Our grandmothers gave it to us in the 
form of sulphur and molasses. For this reason, the 
food manufacturer who employs sulphurous acid 
in bleaching and preserving molasses, dried fruits, 
glucose and white wines, tells us that we can have 
no logical objection to it. He does not know that 
sulphurous acid has none of the properties of sul- 
phur, nor that it is a deadly poison, whereas sulphur 
even in its pure state cannot be said to be a poison. 
It is widely distributed in nature in the form of 
sulphates and sulphides, and is found in all animal 
and vegetable tissues, but whereas all living bodies, 
vegetable or animal, require the organized sulphur 
compounds elaborated by nature they recoil from 
sulphur dioxide, sulphurous acid and sulphuric 
acid as actual destroyers of life. 

Sulphuric acid, H2SO4, is known as oil of vitriol. 
It is exceedingly corrosive, decomposing all animal 
and vegetable substances. Sulphurous acid esti- 
mated as SO3, when thrown into water rapidly com- 
bines with it to form sulphuric acid. Sulphur dioxide 
estimated as SO2, is the colorless, pungent, suffocat- 
ing gas formed by the combustion of sulphur in air. 
It is in this state that it is employed in the bleaching 
of food products, such as all dried apricots, peaches, 
apples, molasses, etc. It is fatal to life. 

Oats or other grains which are treated like dried 
fruits with sulphur dioxide will not germinate. The 
so-called "harmless" sulphur processes of the food 
manufacturer are not in any manner to be con- 
founded with the normal needs of animal or plant 
life for sulphur in its proper form. 

SILICA. 

Silica is the commonest of minerals. It is ex- 
tremely hard, and offers great resistance, even to 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 259 

the oxyhydrogen flame in which it is finally fused 
to a colorless gas. It is found in the rock crystal 
amethyst, agate, onyx, jasper, flint, etc. 

In the form of quartz, we find it in the sand of 
the seashore. It occurs in solution in the waters 
of many mineral springs. It is taken up readily 
by plant life, and enters the body of the animal 
through its food, to perform an indispensable func- 
tion. 

Those who for their own purposes tell us that 
we should not eat silica in the form of the bran of 
the wheat, on a theory that by so doing we eat 
"ground glass," do not realize that silica is one of 
man's mineral needs, and must be appropriated by 
him in the form in which it appears in his food, in 
order that his body may be normal. We can't eat 
the yolk of an egg without eating silica in which it 
occurs as silicic acid. 

SODIUM. 

Sodium is another silver white metal with a high 
lustre. It oxidizes rapidly on exposure to moist air. 
When heated in ordinary air, it burns rapidly with 
a bright yellow flame. When thrown into cold 
water, it oxidizes like potassium, but does not be- 
come hot enough to set the liberated hydrogen on 
fire. At ordinary temperature, it has the consist- 
ency of wax, and when melted at less than the boil- 
ing point of water, it forms a liquid resembling 
mercury in appearance. It is next to potassium as 
the fourth most electropositive metal. In its chem- 
ical relations, it is closely allied to potassium, and 
as a conductor of heat and electricity, it is next to 
silver, copper and gold. 

Two of its compounds are very widely diffused 
in nature; these are common salt, and sodium car- 



260 STARVING AMERICA 

bonate, or ordinary soda. Without sodium in its 
proper form animal life would not exist. 

CHLORINE. 

Chlorine is an elementary gaseous substance 
found in ordinary table salt, and in many forms of 
vegetable life. It has a yellowish green color, and 
when inhaled, violently irritates the air passages. 
It acts as a corrosive agent upon all organic tissues, 
although in its proper forms, usually as chloride, it 
is so indispensable to the life of man, that he could 
not live without it. 

FLUORINE. 

Fluorine, like chlorine is another gaseous ele- 
ment, which has never been collected in a free 
state. It forms many compounds with other ele- 
ments. They are called fluorides, and appear in the 
teeth and bones of the animal. 

As calcium fluoride, it is used in preserving beer, 
asparagus in glass jars, and also in other foods, al- 
though it is one of the most deadly preservatives. 
Forbidden by law, it is nevertheless used in many 
places throughout the United States, and in one well 
known brand of asparagus in glass, its appearance 
was lately discovered in New York City, and the 
proper authorities notified, although to date no 
action has been taken. Brewers use it freely. 

Like the other elements entering into the com- 
position of the human body, fluorine appears in its 
natural state in natural unrefined foods, and in this 
state is appropriated by the body. 

IODINE. X 

Hunt has found that the resistance of animals 
to certain poisons differed greatly according to the 
character of their diet. Bulletin 69, Hygienic Lab- 
oratory, U. S. Treasury Department, states: "In 
extreme cases mice after having been fed upon cer- 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 261 

tain diets may recover from forty times the dose 
of acetonitrile fatal to mice kept on other diets. It 
is moreover, possible to alter the resistance of these 
animals at will, and to overcome the effects of one 
diet by combining it with another. 

The experiments with oats and oatmeal and eggs 
are of special interest. A diet of oats or oatmeal 
usually leads to a marked resistance of mice to 
acetonitrile. The administration of certain iodine 
compounds with such a diet further increases the 
resistance. The experiments showed that as far as 
resistance to acetonitrile is concerned iodine exerts 
its action through the thyroid gland, and the re- 
sistance caused by an oat diet is in part an effect 
exerted upon the thyroid.'' All through nature, we 
find subtle and significant hints that nature knows 
what she is about in preparing foods that will serve 
the needs of man in an ideal manner, if man will 
only co-operate with her, and accept the proposition 
that her dispensations are not the result of accident, 
but beautifully ordered, rhythmical processes pro- 
found in their operations and benevolent in their 
results. 

Resistance to disease is no new principle in med- 
icine. How do errors of diet, refinement of food, 
denaturing of the juice of the sugar cane, chemical 
transformation of starch into glucose, degermin- 
ating of corn, wheat, rice, barley, etc., lower that 
resistance? Yet, unable to answer that Question, 
we go on in our defiance of nature, and refuse to 
eat the noble foods which she offers and which on 
animal and man prove their virtue, when here and 
there some little band of experimenters show the 
awful results that follow every attempt to refine 
or process them. 



262 STAEVING AMERICA ' . 

Iodine exists in the water of the ocean, in min- 
eral springs, in marine mollusks, in sea weeds, and 
in the nitrate deposits of South America. 

At ordinary temperature, it is a solid crystaline 
body, with a bluish black color, and a metallic lustre. 
It is a non-conductor of electricity, and like oxygen 
and chlorine, is electro-negative. It combines read- 
ily with many other substances, and in these states 
is known as iodides. 

It is an irritant poison, but in its proper form 
is required by the human body, in which it is chief- 
ly found in the thyroid gland. If one drop of iodine 
is added to a million drops of water, and a solution 
of starch dropped into the water, the small quantity 
of iodine present will give a blue tinge to the mix- 
ture. 

CARBON. 

Carbon is found in nature in two distinctive 
forms, as the diamond, and as the graphite ; the one 
very hard, the other very soft. It is combustible, 
and burns to carbonic gas outside the body, or in- 
side the body. Without it, we would have no food. 
It is the principal constituent of sugar, glucose, 
starch and fat, although on a diet of pure carbo- 
hydrates, man could only live a very short time. 
Even when fats and proteins are added to pure 
starch or sugar, the animal fed on such food dies 
quickly. 

No food will support life adequately, unless the 
minerals described above are present in their proper 
proportions. Because the food manufacturer does 
not know this, and because the dietitian has given 
it so little attention, low resistance is established in 
tissues nourished on food from which these minerals 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 263 

have been removed by refining processes, and the 
germs of disease take root and flourish in those 
tissues. 

NITROGEN. 

Nitrogen exists in nature as a colorless, odorless, 
tasteless gas. It is not combustible, nor does it 
support combustion. It does not enter readily into 
combination with any other element. It forms 
about 77 per cent of the weight of the atmosphere, 
and it is an indispensable constituent in all animal 
and vegetable tissues. 

When introduced into the body in excess quanti- 
ties, in the form of protein foods, such as meat, 
cheese and eggs, it induces many serious disorders. 

OXYGEN. 

Like nitrogen, oxygen is a colorless, odorless, 
tasteless gas. It combines readily with most of the 
elements, except fluorine. It is so energetic in its 
act of combining with these substances that in 
many instances it evolves light and heat, and bursts 
into flame. In other instances combination takes 
place so slowly, that while the result is the same, 
the heat evolved at one time is not sufficient to pro- 
duce a flame, or even to be noticed. 

The tarnishing or rusting of metals, and the 
decay of animal or vegetable substances, are in- 
stances of this slow combustion. Without free oxy- 
gen there would be no animal or vegetable life. The 
heat of the body, and the energy of the muscles are 
the results of slow combustion produced in all parts 
of the body, by oxygen carried into the system from 
the lungs, by the iron in the blood. 
HYDROGEN. 

Like oxygen and nitrogen, hydrogen is a color- 
less, tasteless, odorless gas. It is the lightest sub- 
stance known in nature. It burns in air with a very 



264 STARVING AMERICA 

pale blue flame and intense heat, the only product 
of its combustion being pure water. It is usually- 
found only in combination with other substances, 
although it occurs free in the gases of volcanoes, 
and of some oil wells. No animal or vegetable 
structure can exist without it. It is a component of 
all acids. When driven out of acids by bases, the 
acids are transformed into salts, and it is thus that 
we get the mineral salts of the earth into our 
bodies. Its function in the processes of life are as 
important as that of any of the substances we have 
considered, but no more so. 

It is the combination of all these substances in 
proper and orderly proportion that sustains life. 
We can thus see why those who prepare our food, 
have no right to artificially treat that food; to de- 
nature, debase, degerminate, demineralize, refine or 
chemically change the character of that food. 

When this naked truth is learned by our legis- 
lators, we will have a new and wholesome food sit- 
uation in the United States, and a newer, whole- 
somer, sturdier and better race of men. 

STARVING THE POOR. 
The yolk of the hen's eggr analyzed by Gautier, 
provides in the food of the child : 

Water 47.19—51.49 

Solids 48.51—42.81 

Fats 21.30—22.84 

Vitellin 15.63—15.76 

Lecithins 8.43—10.72 

Cholesterin 0.44— 1.75 

Mineral Salts 3.33— 0.36 

Poleck and Weber, analyzing 100 parts yolk ash, 
give the following as the yolk's contribution through 
its mineral salts to the diet of the child : 

Sodium (Na.0) 5,12— 6.57 



FOR PHYSICIANS ONLY 265 

Potassium (K^O) 8.05— 8.93 

Calcium (CaO) 12.21—13.28 

Magnesium (MgO) 2.07 — 2.11 

Iron (Fefi,) 1.19— 1.45 

Phosphoric acid, free (P2O5) . 5.72 — 5.72 
Phosphoric acid, combined . . 63.81 — 66.70 

Silicic acid (SiOa) 0.55— 1.40 

Chlorine traces 

Cold storage provides a noble means of carrying 
this precious food-material from abundant periods 
to lean months, at a legitimate profit to the egg in- 
dustry, thus giving to the child a food vi^ithout which 
under our modern standards of debased supplies, 
there is no hope that the necessary body-building 
materials may be found in adequate quantity. 

In spite of the warm weather that prevailed dur- 
ing October and November, 1912, during which time 
millions of eggs were shipped from all parts of the 
country to the already well supplied storage houses 
of New York and Philadelphia, an artificial famine 
was created by the holders of supplies. 

At this writing (November 28, 1912) "fresh" 
eggs are selling in New York at 60 to 65 cents a 
dozen and storage eggs are selling at 40 cents and 
45 cents a dozen. They cost less than 20 cents a 
dozen when they went into storage. The dealers 
predict $1.00 eggs during January. This condition, 
under a knowledge of the meaning of the egg to 
child-life, is so monstrous, inhuman, unnatural and 
intolerable that those who speculate in the indis- 
pensable staples of life, controlling as they do the 
very health and happiness of the weak and defense- 
less, should be treated as any other menace of so- 
ciety is treated. They are murderers in fact, though 



266 STARTING AMERICA 

t)y judge and jury, under our present dispensation, 
they will never be held so. 

It is the duty of our medical associations to go on 
record concerning issues so indissolubly bound with 
the problems of life and death. 

This chapter was the subject of the author*s ad- 
dress before the Eastern Medical Association at 
Hotel Astor, New York, Dec, 3, 1912, 

SALTS OF TIN. 

Com, peas, tomatoes, hominy, kraut, and sweet 
potatoes, cause the least re-action upon the tin in 
which they are packed and are the safest of the 
canned vegetables. 

Plums, peaches, apricots, white cherries, lima 
beans, apples, pork and beans in tomato sauce, to- 
mato soup, and cider act on the tin, and produce tin 
salts, which the trade believes not to be in excess, 
and any interference with which is resented. 

Apparently enamel-lined tins prevent the forma- 
tion of tin salts. The public should be in possession 
of the plain facts, and the physician should know the 
physiological action of tin, not only on the body, but 
on the other chemical agents which his prescription 
calls for. 

Apple butter, blackberries, blueberries, pumpkin, 
black raspberries, red raspberries, red cherries, 
beets, squash, string beans^ wax beans and straw- 
berries become actually dangerous, unless packed in 
glass or tins that are enamel-lined. The canners 
know this. In fact this information reaches the pub- 
lic through the canner's own laboratories, but not 
with their knowledge or approval. The Bureau of 
Chemistry has not instructed the public in this re- 
gard. Its apparent duty is not to interfere with 
"business." 

Spinach, unless packed solid, is not safe in any 
style tin. Rhubarb should not be packed in tin of 
any kind. 



A GRAIN OF WHEAT 

ANALYSIS OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT. 



267 



Following is an analysis which varies slightly, 
depending on character of wheat: 



Water 12% 

Protein 13% 

Fat 2% 

Carbohydrates . 1 f7;|^% 
(Sugar, starch) J 



Mineral salts 2% 



100% 



Ll 



Mineral Analysis: 
Potassium . . . 30.50 

Sodium 2.20 

Na^O 
Calcium 3.20 

CaO 
Magnesium . . 12.00 

MgO 
Iron 1.50 

Fe^Og 
Phosphorus . . 46.00 

P.O. 
Sulphur 50 

SO3 
Silicon 2.00 

SiO^ 
Chlorine .33 

CI 

Fluorine traces 

Iodine traces 

Manganese . .traces 



This mineral content of the whole wheat is 2%. 

The mineral content of white flour is reduced to 
one-half of one per cent. 

Glucose makers put all the mineral content of the 
corn back into their cattle feed, admitting that if 
they do not the cattle will die. 



268 



STARVING AMERICA 



The parts of the wheat berry marked a, skin 
and testa; b, membrane; c, embryo; e, cereal or 
aleurone layer ; f , scutulum, contain three-fourths of 
the mineral salts of the grain. These parts when 
removed, are known as bran, shorts, coarse mid- 
dlings, fine middlings, and tailings. 




Fig. I — Diagrammatic section of 
giain of wheat; a, skin and testa; 
b, membrane; c, embryo; d, flour 
cells; e. cereal or aleurone layer. 
/, scutulum 

This year's wheat crop, 695,443,000 bushels, will 
reach the human family in a minerally robbed con- 
dition, because the fine white flour has thrown all 
these elements out in the milling process. Hardly a 
bushel of that wheat will be consumed by man, as 
mother nature prepared it. 

The illustration of the wheat berry, of which 
section d represents the fine white flour, 72% pure 



A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



269 



starch, will also serve to give you an understanding 
of the formation of barley, rice, oats, and corn, all 
of which are robbed, just as wheat is robbed, with 
the exception of the small proportion of cut oats, or 
whole oat meal, which reaches the consumer in a 
natural state. 

The corn crop of 1912 is estimated at 3,125,713,- 
000 bushels. Few bushels of that grain will reach 



^>^c^'^^9^^^ 



a 




Fic 



-CelJular structure of a gram of wheat 
(After Winton ano Moeller ) 



the needs of man as mother nature furnishes it for 
those needs. 

It is de-germinated and de-mineralized just as 
wheat is debased. The tragedy of our ignorant and 
wanton destruction of the corn crop of America can 
only be appreciated by those who understand the 
full significance of our 15 million physically de- 
fective school children. 



270 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 



The author is indebted to the following, many of 
them without their knowledge, for physiological 
data, enthusiasm for the cause or for personal sym- 
pathy and encouragement. 
Dr. G. C. Simpson, Liverpool School of Tropical 

Medicine, University of Liverpool. 
Professor Benjamin Moore, Professor of Bio-Chem- 
istry, University of Liverpool. 

Dr. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, F. R. S., Reader in 
Chemical Physiology at the University of Cam- 
bridge. 

Dr. Franklin Armstrong, British Association. 

James R. Mitchell, M. D., Lecturer in Chemistry, 
Fort Worth University Medical College. 



Dr. E. S. Edie 

Dr. F. M. Anderson 

Dr. Leonard Hill 

Dr. Fletcher, Burma 

Dr. W. B. Carpenter 

Dr. Pavy, F. R. S. 

Dr. Beddoe, F. R. S. 

Professor Rae Lankes- 
ter, F. R. S. 

Sir B. W. W. Richard- 
son, F. R. S. 

Dr. Frankland Arm- 
strong 

Sir James Crichton 
Browne, M. D., LL. D. 

Dr. Marcet, F. R. S. 

Sir Lauder Brunton 

Dr. G. A. Heron 

Mr. A. P. Gould 

Dr. J. S. Sykes 

Dr. W. R. Smith 

Dr. David Walsh 

Mr. A. M. Robeson 

Dr. Dyee Brown 



Miss May Yates 

Sir W. B. Richmond 

Dr. R. Bevan 

Sir Wm. Collins, M. D. 

Dr. Stanford Read 

Sir Robert Matheson 

Dr. Nathan Raw 

Dr. Alice Kerr 

Dr. Robert Kaye 

Dr. Lena Fox, Bermond- 

I sey Medical Mission 

Dr. Garrow Grant 

Dr. V. G. Heiser, Manila 

Dr. Highet, Siam 

Dr. Aaron, Philippine 

Medical School 
Dr. De Haan, Java 
Dr. Eraser, Singapore 
Frederick C. Johnson 
J. W. Kjelgaard 
E. F. Wright 
Harvey W. Wiley 
Lewis B. Allyn 
Otto Carque 
Floyd W, Robison 



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